Malala Yousafzai Malala Yousafzai Malala Yousafzai ("Malālah Yūsafzay": ; ; born 12 July 1997) is a Pakistani activist for female education and the youngest Nobel Prize laureate. She is known for human rights advocacy, especially the education of women and children in her native Swat Valley in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, northwest Pakistan, where the local Taliban had at times banned girls from attending school. Her advocacy has grown into an international movement, and according to former Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, she has become "the most prominent citizen" of the country. Yousafzai was born to a Pashtun family in Mingora, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa,
Malala Yousafzai banning television, music, girls' education, and women from going shopping. Bodies of beheaded policemen were being displayed in town squares. At first, a girl named Aisha from her father's school agreed to write a diary, but then the girl's parents stopped her from doing it because they feared Taliban reprisals. The only alternative was Yousafzai, four years younger than the original volunteer, and in seventh grade at the time. Editors at the BBC unanimously agreed. "We had been covering the violence and politics in Swat in detail but we didn't know much about how ordinary people lived under the Taliban",