ISLAMABAD – Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai on Monday has left for Londonafter a four-day-visit to Pakistan ended.
The 20-year-old girl departed to Doha along with her family on a privateflight.
On early Thursday morning, Malala returned to Pakistan in her first visitsince she was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman six years ago foradvocating education for girls.
During the visit, she met PM and visited her hometown Swat. She alsolaunched campaign for Malala Fund working for the education of girls inPakistan and other countries.
She also met with friends and family before visiting the all-boys SwatCadet College Guli Bagh, some 15 kilometres (nine miles) outside ofMingora, the district’s main town.
Mingora is where Malala’s family was living and where she was attendingschool on October 9, 2012, when a gunman boarded her school bus, asked “Whois Malala?”, and shot her.
She was treated first at an army hospital then airlifted to the Britishcity of Birmingham.
Her near-miraculous recovery, and tireless career as an education advocate,have since turned her into a global symbol for human rights, and in 2014she became the youngest person ever to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prizewhen she was just 17.
The youngest ever winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014, she hascontinued to be a vocal advocate for girls’ education while pursuing herstudies at Oxford University.
Malala began her campaign aged just 11, when she started writing a blog –under a pseudonym — for the BBC’s Urdu service in 2009 about life underthe Taliban in Swat, where they were banning girls’ education.
In 2007, the militants had taken over the area, which Malala affectionatelycalled “My Swat”, and imposed a brutal, bloody rule.
Opponents were murdered, people were publicly flogged for supposed breachesof sharia law, women were banned from going to market, and girls werestopped from going to school. But it was only after the shooting, and asubsequent near-miraculous recovery, that she became a truly global figure.
She opened a Twitter account on her last day of school in July 2017 and nowhas more than a million followers.
“I know that millions of girls around the world are out of school and maynever get the opportunity to complete their education,” Malala wrote at thetime.