Nobel laureate
Malala Yousafzai has been appointed a UN Messenger of Peace to promote girls
education, more than four years after a Taliban gunman shot her in the head.
At 19, Yousafzai is
the youngest Messenger of Peace, the highest honour given by the UN for an
initial period of two years. She was also the youngest person to win the Nobel
peace prize in 2014 when she was 17.
The Pakistani
education activist came to prominence when she was shot in the head in 2012 as
she was leaving school in Pakistan’s Swat valley, northwest of the country’s
capital Islamabad.
She was targeted for
her campaign against efforts by the Taliban to deny women education.
“You are not only a
hero, but you are a very committed and generous person,” UN Secretary-General
Antonio Guterres told Yousafzai.
Other current
Messengers of Peace include actors Leonardo di Caprio (climate change),
Charlize Theron (prevention of HIV and elimination of violence against women),
and Michael Douglas (disarmament).
Yousafzai has become
a regular speaker on the global stage and visited refugee camps in Rwanda and
Kenya last July to highlight the plight of refugee girls from Burundi and
Somalia.
“Now this is a new
life, this is a second life and it is for the purpose of education. The
extremists tried all their best to stop me, they tried to kill me and they
didn’t succeed,” Yousafzai said on Monday.
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