Name: ____________________________________________ Date: _______________ Period: ______

Nobel Peace Prize

Read the following article related to Malala Yousafzai. Make sure to mark up the text for any important
information. Then, write a short summary using the journalism questions on the back.
In 2014, Malala Yousafzai won the Nobel Peace Prize. It is, arguably, the most impressive and admired
prize in the world. The Nobel Peace Prize comes with a medal and a $1.4 million cash award.
At only 17, Yousafzai is the youngest person ever to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Yousafzai was in the middle of a
chemistry class at her school in
England when she learned she had
won the Nobel Peace Prize. She
knew the announcement was
happening at 11 a.m. and when
that time passed, she thought she
hadnt won. Then a teacher took
her out of the class and told her the
good news. Yousafzai spent the
rest of the day normally, finishing
her chemistry class and going to
the rest of her classes as usual.
Yousafzai won the prize for her
activism (peaceful fight for a good
cause) to spread awareness of the
need for girls to have access to
education.
Yousafzai has faced terrible
opposition from some people in her
home country of Pakistan, who believe girls should not be allowed to attend school. In 2012, when
Yousafzai was 15 years old, those people, known as the Taliban, physically attacked her. They wanted
her to stop telling the world that girls should be educated.
Yousafzai was taken to a hospital in England, where she was given life-saving medical treatment. She
has now fully recovered from the incident and lives in England, where she continues to stand up for girls
right to education.
Yousafzai won the Nobel Peace Prize along with another childrens rights advocate, Kailash Satyarthi.
Satyarthi is 60 years old and lives in India, where he founded an organization called Save the
Childhood. Satyarthi has led many peaceful protests in favour of childrens rights.
In a statement, the Peace Prize committee said that Yousafzai has shown by example that children and
young people, too, can contribute to improving their own situations.
Pakistans prime minister calls Yousafzai the pride of his country. He said in a statement that, girls and
boys of the world should take the lead from her struggle and commitment.

Grant, Joyce. Malala Yousafzai Wins the Nobel Peace Prize Teaching Kids News

Name: ____________________________________________ Date: _______________ Period: ______

Malala: The Girl Who Was Shot for Going to School

Read the following article related to Malala Yousafzai. Make sure to mark up the text for any important
information. Then, write a short summary using the journalism questions on the back.
"For my brothers it was easy to think about the future," Malala recalls. "They can be anything they want.
But for me it was hard and for that reason I wanted to become educated and empower myself with
knowledge." It was this future that was threatened when the first signs of Taliban influence emerged,
with anti-western ideas that swept across Pakistan in the years after 9/11 and the US-led invasion of
Afghanistan.
Like other parts of northwest Pakistan, Swat District had always been a conservative region, but what
was happening by 2007 was very different - radio broadcasts threatening punishments for those who
departed from local Muslim traditions and orders against education.
The worst period came at the end of 2008, when the local Taliban leader issued a frightful warning - all
female education had to cease within a month, or schools would suffer consequences. Malala
remembers the moment well: "'How can they stop us going to school?' I was thinking. 'It's impossible,
how can they do it?'"
By this time, Malala was still only 11, but well aware of how things were changing. "Here in Swat we
hear everyday that so many soldiers were killed and so many were kidnapped at such and such place.
But the police are nowhere to be seen.
"Our parents are also very scared. They told us they would not send us to school until or unless the
Taliban themselves announce on the radio that girls can go to school. The army is also responsible for
the disruption in our education.
"People don't need to be aware of these things at the age of nine or 10 or 11 but we were seeing
terrorism and extremism, so I had to be aware," she says. She knew that her way of life was under
threat. When a journalist from BBC asked her father about young people who might be willing to give
their perspective on life under the Taliban, he suggested Malala.
The result was the Diary of a Pakistani Schoolgirl, a blog for BBC, in which Malala reported her hope to
keep going to school and her fears for the future of Swat. She saw it as an opportunity. "I wanted to
speak up for my rights," she says. "And also I didn't want my future to be just sitting in a room and be
imprisoned in my four walls and just cooking and giving birth to children. I didn't want to see my life in
that way." The blog was anonymous, but Malala was also unafraid to speak out in public about the right
to education, as she did in February 2009 to the Pakistani television brought to Swat.
At that time it was Ziauddin Yousafzai, Malala's father, who was perceived to be at the greatest risk.
Already known as a social and educational activist, he had sensed that the Taliban would move from
other areas of Pakistan into Swat, and had often warned people to be on their guard. No-one thought
the Taliban would target a child. There were however notorious incidents where they had chosen to
make an example of women.
"Malala's voice was the most powerful voice in Swat because the biggest victim of the Taliban was girls'
schools and girls' education and few people talked about it," he says. "When she used to speak about
education, everybody gave it importance."
Husain, Mishal. Malala: The Girl Who Was Shot for Going to School. BBC News

Name: ____________________________________________ Date: _______________ Period: ______

War Against Women

Read the following article related to Malala Yousafzai. Make sure to mark up the text for any important
information. Then, write a short summary using the journalism questions on the back.
The Taliban first became prominent in 1994 and took over the Afghanistan capital, Kabul, in 1996. The
takeover followed over 20 years of civil war and political instability. Initially, some hoped that the Taliban
would provide stability to the country. However, it soon imposed a strict and oppressive order based on
its misinterpretation of Islamic law.
The assault on the status of women began immediately after the Taliban took power in Kabul. The
Taliban closed the women's university and forced nearly all women to quit their jobs, closing down an
important source of talent and expertise for the country. It restricted access to medical care for women,
brutally enforced a restrictive dress code, and limited the ability of women to move about the city.
Under Taliban rule, women were given only the most basic access to health care and medical care,
thereby endangering the health of women, and in turn, their families. These Taliban regulations led to a
lack of acceptable medical care for women and contributed to increased suffering and death rates.
The Taliban also required that windows of houses be painted over to prevent outsiders from possibly
seeing women inside homes, further isolating women who once led productive lives and contributing to a
rise in mental health problems.
In urban areas, the Taliban brutally enforced a dress code that required women to be covered under a
burqa -- a tent-like full-body outer garment that covers them from head to toe. While the burqa existed
prior to the Taliban, its use was not required. As elsewhere in the Muslim world and the United States,
women chose to use the burqa as a matter of individual religious or personal preference. In Afghanistan,
however, the Taliban enforced the wearing of the burqa with threats, fines, and on-the-spot beatings.
Even the accidental showing of the feet or ankles was severely punished. Makeup and nail polish were
prohibited. White socks were also prohibited, as were shoes that make noise as it had been deemed
that women should walk silently.
Even when dressed according to the Taliban rules, women were severely restricted in their movement.
Women were permitted to go out only when accompanied by male relatives or risk Taliban beatings.
Women could only use special buses set aside for their use, and these buses had their windows draped
with thick curtains so that no one on the street could see the women passengers.
The Taliban claimed it was trying to ensure a society in which women had a safe and dignified role.
However, women were stripped of their dignity under the Taliban. They were made unable to support
their families. Girls were deprived of basic health care and of any semblance of schooling. They were
even deprived of their childhood under a regime that took away their songs, their dolls, and their stuffed
animals -- all banned by the Taliban.
Indeed, the Taliban's policies violate many of the basic principles of human rights. These rights include
the right to freedom of expression, the right to work, the right to education, freedom of movement, and
the right to health care. What is more, as Human Rights Watch has noted, "the discrimination is so
overwhelming that it is literally life threatening for many Afghan women."
U.S. Department of State. Report on the Taliban's War Against Women

Name: ____________________________________________ Date: _______________ Period: ______

Nobel Peace Prize Lecture

Dear sisters and brothers, today is a day of great happiness for me. I am 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 am proud, well in fact, I am very proud to be the first Pashtun, the first Pakistani, and the youngest
person to receive this award. Along with that, along with that, I am pretty certain that I am 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.
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 am 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.
Education is one of the blessings of lifeand 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 loved 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 ten that more than 400 schools were destroyed.
Women were flogged. People were killed. And our beautiful dreams turned into nightmares. Education
went from being a right to being a crime. Girls 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 injustices of the terrorists denying our rights, ruthlessly killing
people and misusing the name of Islam. We decided to raise our voice and tell them: Have you not
learnt, have you not learnt that in the Holy Quran Allah says: if you kill one person it is as if you kill the
whole humanity?

The terrorists tried to stop us and attacked 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.
I tell my story, not because it is unique, but because it is not. It is the story of many girls. Though I
appear as one girl, though I appear as one girl, one person, who is 5 foot 2 inches tall, if you include my
high heels. I am not a lone voice, I am many. I am those 66 million girls who are deprived of education.
And today I am 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 sisters and brothers, 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. 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. We still see girls who have no freedom to go to school
in the north of Nigeria. Many children in countries like Pakistan and India are deprived of their right to
education because of social taboos, or they have been forced into child marriage or into child labor.
One of my very good school friends, the same age as me, who had always been a bold 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 still 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 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. In my own village, there is still no secondary school for girls.
And it is my wish and my commitment to build one so that my friends and my sisters can go there to
school and get quality education and to 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 in school. My great
hope is that this will be the last time. Let's solve this once and for all.
It is not time to tell the world leaders to realize 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. 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.
Dear sisters and brothers, dear fellow children, we must work not wait. Not just the politicians and the
world leaders, we all need to contribute. Me. You. We. It is our duty. 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 a girl
is forced into 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. Let's begin this ending ... together ...
today ... right here, right now. Let's begin this ending now.
Thank you so much.
Adapted from the Nobel Lecture from Malala Yousafzai at Nobel Media AB 2015

Name: ____________________________________________ Date: _______________ Period: ______

Girls' Education and Gender Equality

Read the following article related to Malala Yousafzai. Make sure to mark up the text for any important
information. Then, write a short summary using the journalism questions on the back.
Despite progress in recent years, girls continue to suffer severe disadvantage and exclusion in
education systems throughout their lives. An estimated 31 million girls of primary school age and 32
million girls of lower secondary school age were out of school in 2013. Sub-Saharan Africa has the
lowest proportion of countries with gender equality: only two out of 35 countries. And South and West
Asia has the widest gender gap in its out-of-school population - 80 per cent of its out-of-school girls are
unlikely to ever start school compared to 16 per cent of its out-of-school boys. Furthermore, many
countries will still not have reached gender equality. On current trends, it is projected that 68 per cent of
countries will have achieved equality in primary education, and 48 per cent of countries will have
achieved equality in lower secondary education by the 2015 deadline.
Girls education is both an intrinsic right and a critical lever to reaching other development objectives.
Providing girls with an education helps break the cycle of poverty: educated women are less likely to
marry early and against their will; less likely to die in childbirth; more likely to have healthy babies; and
are more likely to send their children to school. When all children have access to a quality education
rooted in human rights and gender equality, it creates a ripple effect of opportunity that influences
generations to come.
Girls education is essential to the achievement of quality learning relevant to the 21st century, including
girls transition to and performance in secondary school and beyond. Adolescent girls that attend school
delay marriage and childbearing, are less vulnerable to disease, and acquire information and skills that
lead to increased earning potential. Evidence shows that the return to a year of secondary education for
girls correlates to a 25 per cent increase in wages later in life.
While gender equality has improved, barriers and bottlenecks around gender differences and
discrimination remain in place, especially at the secondary school level and among the most
disregarded children.
There are various barriers to girls education throughout the world, ranging from supply-side constraints
to negative social norms. Some include school fees; strong cultural norms favoring boys education
when a family has limited resources; inadequate sanitation facilities in schools such as lack of private
bathrooms; and negative classroom environments, where girls may face violence, exploitation or
physical punishment. Additionally, schools often lack sufficient numbers of female teachers.
Increasingly, adolescent girls also face economic and social demands that further disrupt their
education, spanning from household obligations and child labor to child marriage, and gender-based
violence. Recent estimates show that one-third of girls in the developing world are married before age
18, and one-third of women in the developing world give birth before age 20. If all girls had secondary
education in sub-Saharan Africa and South and West Asia, child marriage would fall by 64 per cent,
from almost 2.9 million to just over 1 million. Inadequate or discriminatory legislation and policies often
inhibit girls equal access to quality education. In countries such as Afghanistan and Pakistan, formal or
written threats to close girls schools or end classes for girls have fueled gender motivated attacks on
schools.
Recognizing the opportunities provided through girls education, United Nations supports governments
in the reduction of gender disparities through interventions at national, local and community levels aimed

at empowering girls. Through the United Nations Girls Education Initiative (UNGEI), we champion the
rights of girls and help countries achieve gender equality in education. In addition, we empower girls by
supporting life skills-based education and female role models in education. Child-Friendly Schools
promote gender equality in the classroom by providing an overall gender-sensitive environment that is
conducive to learning at all levels.
These varied and multilayered disadvantages that girls face in education highlight the complex deeprooted nature of these inequalities. Girls access to education alone cannot address these structural
barriers, which require different approaches and strategies that tackle discrimination and power relations
between males and females in schools and society at large.
As we look towards 2015 and beyond, United Nations continues to take a more transformative approach
to girls education by tackling discrimination, violence and the exclusion of girls from education. As such,
programming in girls education will focus on the empowerment of girls as well as improving their
learning and measuring learning outcomes. We are working with partners to move beyond indicators
focused on gender equality and focus more on measuring larger progress in girls education on
dimensions of equity and learning outcomes. Furthermore, this emphasis on girls empowerment will
demand even greater attention to social emotional learning and innovation within education programs.
Adapted from UNICEF Basic Education and Gender Equality