Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Malala Yousafzai attends an international summit on ‘Girls Education in Muslim Communities’, in Islamabad.
| Photo Credit: AFP
Nobel Peace laureate Malala Yousafzai on Sunday (January 12, 2025) said she would continue to call out Israel’s violations of international law and human rights in Gaza.
The education advocate was speaking at a global summit on girls’ education in Muslim nations hosted by Pakistan and attended by representatives from dozens of countries.
“In Gaza, Israel has decimated the entire education system,” she said in an address to the conference.
“They have bombed all universities, destroyed more than 90 percent of schools, and indiscriminately attacked civilians sheltering in school buildings.
“I will continue to call out Israel’s violations of international law and human rights.”
Ms. Yousafzai was shot when she was a 15-year-old schoolgirl by Pakistani militants enraged by her education activism.
She made a remarkable recovery after being evacuated to the United Kingdom and went on to become the youngest ever Nobel Prize winner at the age of 17.
“Palestinian children have lost their lives and future. A Palestinian girl cannot have the future she deserves if her school is bombed and her family is killed,” she added.
The war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas’s attack on October 7, 2023, which resulted in the deaths of 1,208 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
During the attack, Palestinian militants took 251 people hostage, of whom 94 remain in the Gaza Strip, including 34 the Israeli military has declared dead.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive in Gaza has killed 46,537 people, the majority civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory considered reliable by the United Nations.
Malala Yousafzai tells Muslim leaders not to ‘legitimise’ Taliban
Ms. Yousafzai urged Muslim leaders on Sunday not to “legitimise” the Afghan Taliban government and to “show true leadership” by opposing their curbs on women and girls’ education.
“Do not legitimise them,” she told education officials at a summit on girls’ education in Muslim nations being held in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad.
“As Muslim leaders, now is the time to raise your voices, use your power. You can show true leadership,” said 27-year-old Yousafzai.
Delegates from Afghanistan’s Taliban government did not attend the two-day event despite being invited, Pakistan Education Minister Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui told AFP on Saturday.
“Simply put, the Taliban do not see women as human beings,” Yousafzai told the conference. “They cloak their crimes in cultural and religious justification.”
Ms. Yousafzai was shot in the face by the Pakistani Taliban when she was a 15-year-old schoolgirl in 2012, amid her campaigning for female education rights.
Published – January 12, 2025 02:23 pm IST
