Islamabad, Pakistan:

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. 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Iran’s imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Narges Mohammadi
| Photo Credit: VIA REUTERS

Iran’s imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Narges Mohammadi, has been sentenced to another year in prison over her activism, her lawyer said Wednesday.

Mostafa Nili, Mohammadi’s lawyer, said that his client was convicted on a charge of making propaganda against the system. Nili said the sentence came after Ms. Mohammadi urged voters to boycott Iran’s recent parliamentary election, sent letters to lawmakers in Europe and made comments regarding torture and sexual assault suffered by another Iranian journalist and political activist.

Ms. Mohammadi is being held at Iran’s notorious Evin Prison, which houses political prisoners and those with Western ties. She already had been serving a 30-month sentence, to which 15 more months were added in January. Iran’s government has not acknowledged her additional sentencing.

The latest verdict reflects the Iranian theocracy’s anger that she was awarded the Nobel prize last October for years of activism despite a decadeslong government campaign targeting her.

Ms. Mohammadi is the 19th woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize and the second Iranian woman after human rights activist Shirin Ebadi in 2003. Mohammadi, 52, has kept up her activism despite numerous arrests by Iranian authorities and years behind bars.

In November, Ms. Mohammadi went on a hunger strike over being blocked along with other inmates from getting medical care and to protest the country’s mandatory headscarves for women.

Ms. Mohammadi was a leading light for nationwide, women-led protests sparked by the death last year of a 22-year-old woman in police custody that have grown into one of the most intense challenges to Iran’s theocratic government. That woman, Mahsa Amini, had been detained for allegedly not wearing her headscarf to the liking of authorities.

For observant Muslim women, the head covering is a sign of piety before God and modesty in front of men outside their families. In Iran, the hijab — and the all-encompassing black chador worn by some — has long been a political symbol as well, particularly after becoming mandatory in the years following the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

While women in Iran hold jobs, academic positions and even government appointments, their lives are tightly controlled, in part by laws like the mandatory hijab. Iran and neighboring Taliban-ruled Afghanistan are the only countries to mandate the headscarves. Since Amini’s death, however, more women are choosing not to wear hijab despite an increasing campaign by authorities targeting them and businesses serving them.