Malala Yousafzai Speaks in "I Am Malala"

The story of Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai told by The Times's Adam B. Ellick, who made a 2009 documentary about her before she was an international star.



The Nobel Peace Prize is tipped to break new ground this year by possibly going to the youngest ever recipient: 16-year-old Malala Yousafzai, who survived an assassination attempt by the Taliban. According to Kristian Harpviken at the Peace Research Institute and historian Asle Sveen, two Norwegian experts on the prize, the Pakistan schoolgirl tops their shortlist of nominees to be named the winner on Friday.

By winning the Nobel Peace Prize, Malala would join a long list of recipients that have sought to achieve peace through human development, from Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank in 2006 to Médecins Sans Frontières in 1999. To Malala, peace and education are inextricable; without one, you can’t have the other. “I hope that a day will come [when] the people of Pakistan will be free, they will have their rights, there will be peace and every girl and every boy will be going to school,” she told the BBC. Peace, she suggested, starts with a conversation. “The best way to solve problems and to fight against war is through dialogue,” she told the BBC, an exhortation that she hopes her Taliban attackers will follow as well. “They must do what they want through dialogue,” she said. “Killing people, torturing people and flogging people … it’s totally against Islam. They are misusing the name of Islam.”

The Norwegian Nobel Committee said that the Peace Prize had been awarded to the OPCW for its extensive efforts to eliminate chemical weapons.



Despite being the favourite, Pakistan’s Malala Yousafzai did not win the prize but in the run-up to the announcement, the 16-year-old won the hearts of people around the world. Malala over the course of the last week appeared on several television channels and not only advocated her cause of education for all, but also projected a positive image of Pakistan.

Malala was also celebrated back home in Pakistan where she was praised for her efforts, as people pledged that they would continue to support her. Bakhtawar and Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on Twitter advocated for her to become Pakistan’s prime minister, while the country’s current Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif called her the pride of Pakistan and a national asset. The Chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee described her as an exceptional young woman with a bright future. He added that Malala could be nominated for the award next year and the year after that.


Ahmet Üzümcü, head of the OPCW, said the Nobel peace prize money would help the watchdog's work.

The Nobel committee's citation said the prize was a more general one, to mark "its extensive efforts to eliminate chemical weapons" and nudge the few remaining nations that had not yet signed up to the organisation. The work of the OPCW, which has 189 member states, had "defined the use of chemical weapons as a taboo under international law", the committee said, adding that events in Syria had "underlined the need to enhance the efforts to do away with such weapons".

It concluded: "Disarmament figures prominently in Alfred Nobel's will. The Norwegian Nobel committee has through numerous prizes underlined the need to do away with nuclear weapons. By means of the present award to the OPCW, the committee is seeking to contribute to the elimination of chemical weapons."