Malala Yousafzai: Nobel Peace Prize Lecture 2014

Malala yourself sigh I call upon you to come forward and give your noble lecture thank you sir bismillahirrahmanirrahim in the name of God the most merciful the most beneficent your Majesties your Royal Highnesses distinguished members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee dear sisters and brothers today is the day of great happiness for me I'm humbled that the Nobel Committee has selected me for this precious award thank you to everyone for your continued support and love thank you for the letters and cards that I still receive from all around the world your kind and encouraging words strengthens

and inspires me I would like to thank my parents for their unconditional love thank you to my father for not clipping my wings and for letting me fly thank you to my mother for inspiring me to be patient and to always speak the truth which we strongly believe is the true message of Islam and also thank you to all my wonderful teachers who inspired me to believe in myself and be brave I'm proud well in fact I'm very proud to be the first person the first Pakistani and the youngest person to receive this award along

with that along with that I'm pretty certain but I'm also the first recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize who still fights with her younger brothers I want there to be peace everywhere but my brothers and I are still working on that I'm also honored to receive this award together with Kailash Satyarthi who has been a champion for children's rights for a long time twice as long in fact and I have been alive I'm proud that we can work together we can work together and show the world that an Indian and a Pakistani they can work

together and achieve their goals of children's rights dear brothers and sisters I was named after the inspirational Mullaly of Maiwand who is the person Joan of Arc the word Malala means grief-stricken sad but in order to learn some happiness to it my grandfather would always call me Malala the happiest girl in the world and today I am very happy that we are together fighting for an important cause this award is not just for me it is for those forgotten children who want education it is for those frightened children who want peace it is for those

voiceless children who want change I'm here to stand up for their rights to raise their voice it is not time to pity them it is not time to pity them it is time to take action so it becomes the last time the last time so it becomes the last time that we see a child deprived of Education I have found that people describe me in many different ways some people call me the girl who was shot by the Taliban and some the girl who fought for her rights some people call me lewb a Nobel laureate

now however my brothers still called me that annoying bossy sister as far as I know I'm just a committed an even stubborn person who wants to see every child getting quality education who wants to see women having equal rights and who wants peace in every corner of the world education is one of the blessings of life and one of its necessities that has been my experience during the 17 years of my life in my paradise home SWAT I always loved learning and discovering new things I remember when my friends and I would decorate our hands

with henna on special occasions and instead of drawing flowers and patterns we would paint our hands with mathematical formulas and equations we had a thirst for education we had a thirst for education because our future was right there in that classroom we would sit and learn and read together we love to wear neat and tidy school uniforms and we would sit there with big dreams in our eyes we wanted to make our parents proud and prove that we could also excel in our studies and achieve those goals which some people think only boys can but

things did not remain the same when I was in Swat which was a place of tourism and beauty suddenly changed into a place of terrorism I was just 10 that more than 400 schools were destroyed women were flogged people were killed you know beautiful dreams turned into nightmares education went from being a right to being a crime guns were stopped from going to school when my world suddenly changed my priorities changed too I had two options one was to remain silent and wait to be killed and the second was to speak up and then be

killed I chose the second one I decided to speak up we could not just stand by and see those in justices of the terrorists denying God rights ruthlessly killing people and misusing the name of Islam we decided to raise our voice and tell them have you not learned have you not learned that in the Holy Quran Allah says if you kill one person it is as if you kill the whole humanity do you not know that Muhammad peace be upon him the prophet of mercy he says do not harm yourself or others and do you

not know that the very first word of the Holy Quran is the word ypres which means read the terrorist tried to stop us and it takes me and my friends who are here today on our school bus in 2012 but neither their ideas nor their bullets could win we survived and since that day our voices have grown louder and louder [Music] I tell my story not because it is unique but because it is not it is the story of many guns today I tell their stories too I have brought with me some of my sisters

from Pakistan from Nigeria and from Syria who shared this story my brave sisters Shazia and Kainat who were also shot that day on our school bus but they have not stopped learning in my brave sister why not so bro who went through severe abuse in extreme violence even her brother was killed but she did not succumb also my sisters here whom I have met during my Malala fund campaign my 16 year old courageous sister mizune from Syria who now lives in Jordan as a refugee and she goes from tent to tent encouraging girls and boys

to learn in my sister Amina from the north of Nigeria where Boko Haram threatens and stops girls and even kidnaps girls just for wanting to go to school though I appear as one girl though I here is one girl one person who is 5 foot 2 inches tall if you include my high heels it means I'm 5 foot only I am NOT a lone voice and not a lone voice I am many I am Malala but I'm also sure Zia I'm Chi not I'm Kainat Soomro I am ma soon I am Amina I am those

66 million girls who are deprived of Education and today I'm not raising my voice it is the voice of those 66 million girls sometimes people like to ask me why should girls go to school why is it important for them but I think the more important question is why shouldn't they why shouldn't they have this right to go to school dear brothers and sisters today in half of the world we see rapid progress and development however there are many countries where millions still suffer from the very old problems of war poverty and injustice we still

see conflicts in which innocent people lose their lives and children become orphans we see many people becoming refugees in Syria versa in Iraq in Afghanistan we see families being killed in suicide attacks and bomb blasts many children in Africa do not have access to education because of poverty and as I said we still see we still see girls who have no freedom to go to school in the north of Nigeria many children in countries like Pakistan enough in India as Kailash Satyarthi mentioned many children especially in India and Pakistan are deprived of their right to

education because of social taboos or they have been forced into child marriage or into child labour one of my very good school friends the same ages me who who has always been bald and confident girl dreamed of becoming a doctor but her dream remained a dream at the age of 12 she was forced to get married and then soon she had a son she had a child when she herself was a child only 14 I know that she could have been a very good doctor but she couldn't because she was a girl her story is

why I dedicate the Nobel Peace Prize money to the Malala fund to help give girls quality education everywhere anywhere in the world and to raise their voices the first place this funding will go to is where my heart is to build schools in Pakistan especially in my home of Saud and shangela in my own village there is still no secondary school for girls and it is my wish and my commitment and now my challenge to build one so that my friends and my sisters can go there to school and get quality education and they get

this opportunity to fulfill their dreams this is where I will begin but it is not where I will stop I will continue this fight until I see every child every child in school dear brothers and sisters great people who brought change like Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela mother Teresa in anseong so she once stood here on this stage I hope the steps that Kailash Satyarthi and I have taken so far and will take on this journey will also bring change lasting change my great hope is that this will be the last time this will

be the last time we must fight for education let's solve this once and for all we have already taken many steps now it is time to take a leap it is not time to tell the one leaders to realise how important education is they already know it their own children are in good schools now it is time to call them to take action for the rest of the world's children we ask the world leaders to unite and make education their top priority fifteen years ago the world leaders decided on a set of global goals the

Millennium Development Goals in the years that have followed we have seen some progress the number of children out of school has been half as Kailash Satyarthi said however the world focused only on primary education and progress did not reach everyone in year 2015 representatives from all around the world will meet in the United Nations to set the next set of goals sustainable development goals this will set the world's ambition for the next generations the world can no longer accept that the world can no longer accept that basic education is enough why do leaders accept that

for children in developing countries only basic literacy is sufficient when their own children do homework in algebra mathematics science and physics leaders must seize this opportunity to guarantee a free quality primary and secondary education for every child some will say this is impractical or too expensive or too hard or maybe even impossible but it is time the world thinks bigger your sisters and brothers the so-called world of Eddard's may understand it but we children don't why is it that countries which we call strong are so powerful in creating Wars but are so weak in bringing

peace why is it why is it that giving guns is so easy but giving books is so hard why is it why is it that making tanks is so easy but welding schools is so hard we are living in the modern age and we believe that nothing is impossible we have reached the wound 45 years ago and maybe will soon land on Mars then in this 21st century we must be able to give every child quality education dear sisters and brothers dear fellow children we must work not wait not just the politicians and the one

leaders we all need to contribute me you we it is our duty let us become the first generation to decide to be the last let us become the first generation that decides to be the last that sees empty classrooms lost childhoods and wasted potentials let this be the last time that a girl or a boy spends their childhood in a factory let this be the last time that the girl is forced in the early child marriage let this be the last time that a child loses life in war let this be the last time that

we see a child out of school let this end with us there's beginning this ending together today right here right now let's begin this ending now thank you so much [Applause]