Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai said she was “overwhelmed” to return to Pakistan to attend the global summit on girls’ education in the Islamic world.
Yousafzai, who was shot by the Taliban in 2012 for advocating for girls’ education, arrived in Islamabad for the two-day summit, which aims to address the education crisis facing millions of girls in Muslim-majority countries.
“I am really honoured, overwhelmed and happy to be back in Pakistan,” Yousafzai told AFP on arrival.
The summit, which opened on Saturday morning, is attended by representatives from various Muslim-majority nations where tens of thousands of girls are currently out of school.
On Sunday, Yousafzai is scheduled to address the assembly. “I want to talk about protecting the rights of all girls to go to school and why leaders must hold the Taliban accountable for their crimes against Afghan women and girls,” she wrote on social media platform X ahead of the event.
Pakistan’s education minister, Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui, confirmed that Afghanistan’s Taliban government was invited to the summit, but Islamabad has yet to receive a response. Afghanistan remains the only country in the world where girls and women are banned from going to school and university.
Since the Taliban’s return to power in 2021, the regime has imposed a strict interpretation of Islamic law that the United Nations has condemned as “gender apartheid”.
Pakistan itself faces a serious education crisis with over 26 million children out of school, primarily due to poverty, according to government figures.
Yousafzai, who was attacked by the Pakistani Taliban in 2012 while traveling on a school bus in the Swat Valley, was later evacuated to Britain. Since then, she has become a global advocate for girls’ education, and at 17, she became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.
