MALALA YOUSAF, YOUNGÈST NOBEL PEACE PRIZE WINNER

Malala Yousafzai, Youngest Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Adds to Her Achievements and Expectations


Malala Yousafzai at the United Nations last
year. Ms. Yousafzai, 17, is the youngest
recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.
TODD HEISLER / THE NEW YORK TIMES
By JODI KANTOR
OCTOBER 10, 2014
Though Malala Yousafzai is 17, she does
not use Facebook or even a mobile phone
lest she lose focus on her studies. She
spent her summer vacation flying to
Nigeria to campaign for the release of girls
kidnapped by the extremist Islamist group
Boko Haram, but also worrying about her
grades, which recently took a worrisome
dip. She confronted President Obama
about American drone policy in a meeting
last year, but finds it difficult to befriend
her fellow students in Birmingham,
England.
“I want to have fun, but I don’t quite
know how,” she wrote in the edition of
her autobiography for young readers.
On Friday, Ms. Yousafzai became the
youngest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize
— grouped in the same pantheon as the
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and
Mother Teresa, and yet still a student at
Edgbaston High School for Girls, where she
was summoned out of her chemistry class
to hear the news.
Ms. Yousafzai began campaigning for girls’
education at the age of 11, three years
before she was shot by the Taliban. She
was so young that some observers
questioned how well equipped a child of
that age could be to put her own safety on
the line and commit to a life of activism.
The prize she received on Friday validates
what she has taken on, but also
underscores the disproportionate
expectations that trail her: Can she truly
influence the culture of her home country
of Pakistan, which she cannot even visit
because of threats to her safety, and where
many revile her as a tool of the West? Ms.
Yousafzai may be an Anne Frank-like
figure who defied terror, showed
extraordinary courage and inspires hope,
but how much can one teenager
accomplish?
“Can she actually create systemic change
at this young age? Can she create a
movement? Because she doesn’t have that
kind of infrastructure in Pakistan at the
moment,” said Vishakha Desai, a professor
of international relations at Columbia, said
in a telephone interview.
In one half of Ms. Yousafzai’s dual life,
she is the center of an international
advocacy operation for girls’ education
that now involves a nonprofit
organization, two best-selling books, and
activities that stretch from Pakistan to
Jordan to Kenya. She criticizes not just the
Taliban, but also the culture of Pakistan,
in which women are rarely granted the
same rights and opportunities as men. She
has become one of the world’s most
prominent faces of moderate Islam, saying
in a recent interview that she tried
wearing a burqa when she was younger
but gave it up: “I realized that it just took
away my freedom, and that’s why I
stopped wearing it.”
When she met with Mr. Obama last year,
she critiqued American military action in
her home region. “Instead of soldiers, send
books. Instead of sending weapons, send
pens,” as she later put it. (Asked how he
responded, she gave a knowing look. “He’s
a politician,” she said.)