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Malala: Idol to the world, outcast at home

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Full list of Nobel peace prize winners

17 yrs Malala Yousafzay is the youngest Nobel Laureate ever, Lawrence Bragg (Physics 1915) was 25 when awarded the Prize with his father. — The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 10, 2014

17 years old, Pakistani Malala Yousafzay: 1/2 #nobelprize2014 in Peace @MalalaFund pic.twitter.com/1HCQNC4gjW — The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 10,

LONDON: The Norwegian Nobel Institute has admitted for the first time ever, that the global figurehead for a girl’s right to an education — Malala Yousafzai missed out on the Nobel peace prize in 2013 for being too young.She however won the world’s most coveted prize on Friday. This still makes her the youngest Nobel laureate ever at the age of 17.So far, 47 Nobel prizes have gone to women between 1901 and 2014. Malala became the 16th woman being awarded the Nobel peace prize which also includes Mother Teresa from India.Director of the Nobel Institute in Oslo Geir Lundestad told TOI in an exclusive interview “It is a tremendous responsibility to win the Nobel prize. And when you give it to someone too young or too unknown, it changes their life forever. We throw them out to the world stage overnight. We felt the same about Malala last year and thought it was too early for her to receive the prize”.The Nobel committee was also wary whether Malala would be able to handle the pressure that comes from global fame and expectation after winning the Nobel prize.“However, Malala has performed very well over the past year as a global ambassador for education and we felt it was time to give her the prize,” Lundestad told TOI.The Norwegian Nobel Committee had awarded the prize in 2013 to the International Chemical Weapons watchdog that is destroying poison gas stockpiles in Syria, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.Malala was however very gracious in defeat even though she was the favourite to win. She said OPCW deserved to win the prize and said on Twitter “congratulate the OPCW and thank it for its wonderful work for humanity”.Later when asked on missing the prize, she said “I think that it’s really an early age. But there’s always later. I would feel proud, when I would work for education, when I would have done something, when I would be feeling confident to tell people, Yes, I have built that school; I have done that teachers’ training, I have sent that (many) children to school. Then if I get the Nobel peace prize, I will be saying, Yeah, I deserve it, somehow”.One of the events that caught the Nobel committee’s eye was the confidence with which Malala addressed the UN.She told the elite gathering on her 16th birthday that books and pens scare extremists. Malala has been credited with bringing the issue of women's education to global attention. A quarter of young women around the world have not completed primary school.Malala in 2013 also won the prestigious Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 2013. Yousafzai was a student from the town of Mingora in Swat District, Pakistan, known for her women’s rights activism in the Swat Valley, where the Taliban regime has banned girls from attending school.She gave her first public speech in September 2008, entitled “How dare the Taliban take away my basic right to an education?”When all girls schools under Taliban control were closed in January 2009, she started a blog for BBC Urdu under the pseudonym of Gul Makai, a folklore heroine. The blog brought fame to Malala and her fight. Threats to her family followed as soon as her identity was revealed, leading up to an assassination attempt in October 2012, when she was shot in the head and neck by Taliban gunmen while returning home on a school bus.Malala has gained global recognition as a human rights fighter militating for the right to female education, freedom and self-determination.She then said that a country’s strength should not be measured by its army but by the number of educated people in it.Making a passionate plea for more education, Malala said “We are all here together united to help these children, to speak for them, to take action. These children do not want an I phone, an X-box, a Playstation or chocolates. They just want a book and a pen”.Malala recently went silent for 24 hours to show solidarity with children whose voices are silenced.