Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai said she was “overwhelmed” to be back in her native Pakistan Saturday, as she arrived for a global summit on girls’ education in the Islamic world.
The education activist was shot by the Pakistan Taliban militants in 2012 when she was a schoolgirl, and has returned to the country only a handful of times since.
“I’m truly honoured, overwhelmed and happy to be back in Pakistan,” she told AFP as she arrived at the conference in the capital Islamabad with her parents.
The two-day summit brings together representatives from Muslim-majority countries, where tens of millions of girls are out of school.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif was set Saturday morning to address attendees, including local schoolgirls and university students.
“At last we have a good initiative on Muslim girls’ education,” said Zahra Tariq, a 23-year-old studying clinical psychology.
“Those in rural areas are still facing problems. In some cases their families are the first barrier,” she told AFP.
Yousafzai is due to address the summit on Sunday, and said she would focus on Afghanistan — the only country in the world where girls and women are banned from going to school and university.
“I will speak about protecting rights for all girls to go to school, and why leaders must hold the Taliban accountable for their crimes against Afghan women & girls,” she posted on social media platform X on Friday.
Pakistan’s education minister, Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui, told AFP the Taliban government in Afghanistan had been invited to attend, but Islamabad had not received a response.
Since returning to power in 2021, the Afghan Taliban government has imposed an austere version of Islamic law that the United Nations has called “gender apartheid”.
Pakistan is facing its own severe education crisis with more than 26 million children out of school — one of the highest figures in the world — mostly as a result of poverty, according to official government figures.
Yousafzai became a household name after she was attacked by Pakistan Taliban militants on a school bus in the remote Swat valley in 2012.
Militancy was widespread in the region at the time as the war between the Afghan Taliban and NATO forces raged across the border in Afghanistan.
The Pakistan and Afghan Taliban are separate groups but share close links and similar ideologies, including a strong disbelief in educating girls.
Yousafzai was evacuated to the United Kingdom after her attack and went on to become a global advocate for girls’ education and, at the age of 17, the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner.
