Read the full Malala Yousafzais voice as she performed it in Oslo on December 10 when she received the Nobel Peace Prize:
Bismillah hir rahman ir rahim. In God the merciful and most beneficent name.
Your Majesties, Honourable Members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, dear sisters and brothers. This day is a very happy day for me. I am humbled that the Nobel Committee has chosen me as the recipient of this prestigious award.
Thank you all for your continued support and love. I am grateful for all the letters and cards that I still receive from around the world. To read the warm and encouraging words from you both strengths and inspires me.
I want to thank my parents for their unconditional love. I want to thank my dad for not wing clipped me and let me fly. I want to thank my mom that she has inspired me to be patient and to always tell the truth – something we are convinced is Islam’s real message. And also, thank you to all my wonderful teachers who inspired me to believe in myself and be brave.
I am proud, I am actually very proud of being the first Pashtun, the first Pakistani and the youngest person to receive this award. Beside this I am also quite sure that I am also the first recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize that still arguing with his younger brothers. I want it to be peace everywhere, but my brothers and I work still working.
I am also honored to receive this award along with Kailash Satyarthi, who has been an advocate of children’s rights over the long haul. In fact twice as long as I lived. I am proud that we can work together and show the world that an Indian and a Pakistani and achieve their goals for children’s rights.
Dear brothers and sisters, I am named after the Pashtuns own Jeanne d’Arc and greatest source of inspiration, Malalai of Maiwand. Word Malala means “heartbroken”, “sad”, but to add that bit of happiness spent my grandfather always calling me Malala, the happiest girl and today I am very happy that we are here together and fighting important issue.
This award not only for me. It goes to the forgotten children who want an education. It goes to the frightened children who want peace. It goes to the voiceless children who want change.
I am here to defend their rights, raising their voice. This is not a time to feel sorry for them. This is not a time to feel sorry for them. We must act so that this is the last time, the last time, we see that a child is being deprived of the right to education.
I’ve discovered that people describe me in many different ways.
Some call me the girl who was shot by the Taliban
Some call me the girl who fought for their rights.
And some people call me a “Nobel laureate” now.
Either call my brothers me still for their annoying, bossy sister.
The way I see it, I’m just an enthusiastic and stubborn person who wants all children to get good education, that there should be equal rights for women and that it should be peace across the globe.
Education is one of life’s blessings – and one of life’s necessities. It is something I have experienced over the 17 years I’ve lived. In my home in the Swat valley in northern
Pakistan I loved to go to school and learn new things. I remember my friends and decorated our hands with henna painting on special occasions. Instead of drawing flowers and patterns, we painted mathematical formulas and equations on our hands.
We thirsted for education because our future lay just there, in the classroom. We used to sit and read and learn things together. We loved our clean and nice school uniforms and we sat there and dreamed big dreams in our eyes. We wanted to make our parents proud and prove that we could excel in our studies and achieve things that some believe it’s only boys can achieve.
But things did not remain that way. When I was in Swat, it was a beautiful place and a tourist whose to a place of terrorism. Over 400 schools were destroyed. Girls were prevented from going to school. Women were whipped. People were killed. And our beautiful dreams became nightmares.
Education went from being a privilege to be a crime.
But when my world suddenly changed, also changed my priorities themselves.
I had two options, one was to remain silent and wait to be killed. The second was to speak out and then be killed. I chose the second option. I decided to speak out.
We could not just stand and watch terrorists injustices, which denied us our rights. Considerations Resolved killed people and abused the name of Islam. We decided to raise voice, and tell them: Have you not learned that in the Holy Quran says, if you kill one person, it is as if you kill all humanity. Do not you know that Mohammed, peace be upon him, he says, do not hurt yourself or others. And do not you know, that the very first word in the Holy Quran is “read”.
The terrorists tried to stop us and they attacked me and my friends on the school bus in 2012, but neither their ideas or bullets could not win.
We survived. And since that day, our voices become increasingly stronger.
I’m telling my story is not because it is unique, but because it is not.
It is the story of many girls.
Today I am telling their story too. Here in Oslo, I have with me some of my sisters who share this story with me, friends from Pakistan, Nigeria and Syria, which share this speech. My brave sisters Shazia and Kainate Riaz who also was shot that day in the Swat valley with me, but they have not stopped learning. The same applies to my brave sister Kainate Somros from Pakistan, who were subjected to extreme violence and abuse, her brother were even killed, but she snapped never.
Other girls who are with me here I have met during the campaign for Malala Fund and they have now become like sisters to me. My brave 16 year old sister Mezon from Syria, who lives in a refugee camp in Jordan and going from tent to tent to help girls and boys who want to learn. And my sister Amina, from northern Nigeria, where Boko Haram threatens and kidnaps girls just because they want to go to school.
Although I stand before you here as one girl , one person – 1.57 m high when I walk with high heels. That means I only have 150 cm high. So I’m not a lone voice, I am many.
I am Malala.
But I also Shazia.
I am Kainate.
I am Kainate Somros.
I’m Mezon.
I am Amina. I am all these 66 million girls who are deprived of schooling.
Today I raise my voice not, it is the voice of the 66 million girls.
People often ask me why it is particularly important that girls receive education. But a more important question is, why should not they?
Dear brothers and sisters. In half the world today we see the development and modernization. Nevertheless, there are many countries where millions of people suffer from war, poverty and injustice. We still see conflicts where innocent people lose their lives and children are orphans.
We see many people become refugees in Syria and Iraq. In Afghanistan, we see people being killed in suicide attacks. Many children in Africa have no access to education because of poverty.
Many children in India and Pakistan are deprived of schooling because of social taboos or because they are forced into child labor or because girls are forced into child marriage.
One of my good schoolfriend who is as old as me, was at one time a brave and confident girl, who dreamed of becoming a doctor. But this dream remained a dream. When she was 12, she was forced to marry and she quickly got a son at the age of only 14 years, a child, while she herself was only a child. I know that my friend would have been a very skilled physician.
But it did not, because she was a girl.
Her story is why I give the prize money for the Nobel Prize for Malala Fund, which contributes to quality education for girls around the world and encourage world leaders to help girls like me, Mezun and Amina. The first place this money will go to is the place where I have my heart, to build schools in Pakistan – and especially my home Swat and Shangla.
In my own village there is still no school for girls. It is my wish and my challenge to build such a school, that my friends and my sisters to acquire an education – and thus get the opportunity to fulfill their dreams.
This is where I will start, but it does not stop there. I will continue this fight until I see that every child, every child in school.
Dear brothers and sisters, people who have created change, like Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela , Mother Teresa and Aung San Suu Kyi once stood on this stage. I hope the steps Kailash Satyarti and I have taken so far and will take further on this journey will also lead to change – lasting change.
My big hope is that this is the last time we have to fight for education for our children. Let’s fix this once and for all.
We have already taken many steps in the right direction. Now is the time to take a leap.
Time today should not be used to tell world leaders how important education is – they know it already – their own children attend good schools. Now is the time for asking them to act for the rest of the world’s children.
We ask world leaders to stand together to provide education of the highest priority.
Fifteen years ago, the world leaders a set of global objectives, namely the Millennium Development Goals. In the years since, we have seen some progress. Number of children not attending school has been halved, as Kailsah Satyarthi said. But the world focused only on primary education, and progress has not reached out to everyone.
Next year, in 2015 will representatives from around the world meet at the UN to adopt the next set of goals, objectives for sustainable development. There will world aspirations for future generations be established. The world can no longer accept that basic school is enough, when their own children doing homework in algebra, physics and research. Leaders must seize this opportunity to ensure a good and free education to all children.
Some would say that this is impractical, or for expensive or too difficult, or perhaps even impossible. But it is time that the world thinks bigger.
Dear brothers and sisters, the so-called adult world might understand it, but as children we can not understand it. How can it be that those countries that we call “strong”, so powerful, so good at creating war, but so bad for peacemaking? Why is it so? How can it be that it’s so easy to give away weapons, but so difficult to give away books? How can it be that it is so easy to build tanks, but so hard to build schools?
Now we live in the modern era, the 21st century, and we all believe nothing is impossible. We reached the moon 45 years ago, and soon we may land on Mars. In this 21st century, we must be determined that the quality sudan for all creation will also become a reality.
Dear sisters and brothers. We must work, not wait. Everyone must contribute. We must all contribute, not just politicians and world leaders, but also I, you and we. It is our duty.
Let us resolve to be the last generation that looks empty classroom, lost childhoods, and wasted potential.
Let this be the last time a boy or girl spend their childhood at a factory.
Let this be the last time a girl is forced into an early marriage.
Let this be the last time a child killed in a war.
Let this be the last time we see a child who do not attend school.
Let’s start with this conclusion, together, today, right here, right now.
Let’s start this conclusion now.
Thank you.
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