MALALA Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenage activist nominated for Friday's Nobel Peace Prize, was awarded the prestigious Sakharov human rights prize by the European Parliament on Thursday.

To thunderous applause announcing the prize, the parliament's president Martin Schulz said "Malala bravely stands for the right of all children to be granted a fair education. This right for girls is far too commonly neglected."

The parliament's vote for Malala amid a shortlist of three nominees "acknowledges the incredible strength of this young woman," Schulz added.

The 16-year-old has become an emblem of the fight against the most radical forms of Islamism.

She was shot in the head by the Pakistani Taliban on October 9 last year for speaking out against them and has gone on to become a global ambassador for the right of all children to go to school.

Her old school closed on Wednesday to mark the first anniversary of her shooting.

She was taken to Britain for treatment in the wake of the attack and now goes to school in the central city of Birmingham.

Feted by world leaders and celebrities for her courage, she has addressed the UN, this week published an autobiography, and could become the youngest ever Nobel Peace Prize laureate on Friday.

In an interview with Pakistani radio station City89 FM this week she said she had not yet earned that accolade.

"There are many people who deserve the Nobel Peace Prize and I think that I still need to work a lot," she said.

There was no immediate response from Malala, currently in New York, to winning the 50,000 ($A72,134.46) Sakharov prize. It will be handed to the teenager at a ceremony in Strasbourg on November 20.

However, the Taliban said on Thursday that she has done "nothing" to earn the Nobel Prize.

"She has done nothing. The enemies of Islam are awarding her because she has left Islam and has became secular," Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) spokesman Shahidullah Shahid told AFP by telephone from an undisclosed location.

"She is getting awards because she is working against Islam. Her struggle against Islam is the main reason of getting these awards."

He repeated the TTP's threat - made numerous times in recent months - to try again to kill Malala, "even in America or the UK".

Malala first rose to prominence with a blog for the BBC Urdu service chronicling the difficulties of life under the rule of the Taliban, who controlled Swat valley from 2007 until they were kicked out by the army in 2009.

In the region in deeply conservative northwest Pakistan, women are often expected to stay at home to cook and rear children and officials say only around half of girls go to school.