Loading...
Malala Yousafzai, the 16-year-old Pakistani girl who survived a Taliban attack, received the Sakharaov prize on Wednesday from the European Parliament. The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought is one of the most important humanitarian recognitions in the world.
While receiving the prize of roughly $67,000, Malala was gracious enough not to turn her speech about herself and about her survival, but placed a plea on behalf of the nearly 60 million children who can’t go to school. Children and girls who live in fear and are confined to a world inside their homes.
She told the parliamentarians, “This must shake her conscience” and said she hoped the West would see beyond their own nations and borders and bring relief to these children, specifically to those in Pakistan.
She wore high heels, but explained that she was wearing high heels to be seen over the podium.
Get JD Journal in Your Mail
Subscribe to our FREE daily news alerts and get the latest updates on the most happening events in the legal, business, and celebrity world. You also get your daily dose of humor and entertainment!!
Malala admitted that the Sakharov prize would help her to continue her work for education and to stand up against the Pakistani Taliban. She emphasized, “Because of terrorism, hundreds of schools have been destroyed.”
The people who attended the ceremony at Strasbourg, France, included 22 former prize winners, and the ceremony, held on the World Children’s Day, focused on the young teenager.
Malala is still struggling with nerve damage caused by a bullet from the Taliban. Just a year and a day before the day of the award ceremony she had escaped death while standing up for a girl’s right to go to school in Pakistan. The Pakistani Taliban gunmen fired at her as she rode back from school to her home.
As a result of the attack, she suffered nerve damage, her brain swelled and she was flown to UK.
In 2009, the Taliban banned female education in the Swat valley which was the home of Malala.
