Malala Yousafzai

Malala Yousafzai was born in 1997 in the Swat Valley of Pakistan. Her voice first gained international attention at the age of eleven when she wrote for BBC Urdu about life under Taliban rule. In October 2012, Malala was targeted by the Taliban and was shot in the head while returning home on a school bus. Miraculously, she survived and was transferred to a specialized hospital in Birmingham. In March 2013, after an impressive recovery, she returned to school, this time in Birmingham, where she lives with her family. In 2013, she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, becoming the youngest nominee in the history of the award. That same year, she received the Sakharov Prize and Amnesty International's highest honor, the Ambassador of Conscience Award. On July 12, 2013, her sixteenth birthday, Malala delivered a speech at the United Nations headquarters on the importance of the right to education. Her book "I Am Malala," co-written with Christina Lamb, won the Specsavers National Book of the Year Award in the UK in 2013 and has been translated into almost every language worldwide. In 2014, at the age of seventeen, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, along with Indian children's rights activist Kailash Satyarthi, "for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education."