Malala Yousafzai, the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, said she was “overwhelmed” to be returning to her home country of Pakistan on Saturday while attending a worldwide summit on education for girls in the Islamic world.
The education campaigner has only made a few trips back to Pakistan since she was shot by the Taliban in 2012 while she was still a student.
“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.
The two-day summit was set to be opened Saturday morning by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, and brings together representatives from Muslim-majority countries, where tens of millions of girls are out of school.
Yousafzai is due to address the summit on Sunday.
“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.
The Taliban government in Afghanistan has been invited to participate, but Islamabad has not responded, the country’s education minister Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui told AFP.
The only nation in the world that forbids women and girls from attending college or university is Afghanistan.
The Taliban regime has enforced a strict interpretation of Islamic law that the UN has referred to as “gender apartheid” since regaining control of the country in 2021.
According to official government statistics, Pakistan is experiencing one of the worst education crises in the world, with over 26 million children not attending school, primarily due to poverty.
After being attacked by Pakistan Taliban militants on a school bus in the isolated Swat region in 2012, Yousafzai rose to fame.
After being evacuated to the UK, she became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize at the age of 17 and a global advocate for girls’ education.
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