Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai visited her hometown, Barkana, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Shangla district on Wednesday, marking her first return since the 2012 Taliban attack.
At the age of 15, Malala was shot in the face by the Pakistani Taliban due to her advocacy for girls’ education. Her activism led to her receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014, and she has since become a prominent global advocate for women’s education rights.
Malala, who has resided in the United Kingdom since October 2012, last visited Pakistan in January, where she addressed a summit in Islamabad, highlighting the challenges faced by women under the Taliban regime, which she termed “gender apartheid.”
During her visit to Barkana, Malala reunited with family members and visited her ancestral graveyard. She also met her uncle, Ramazan, who recently underwent heart surgery in Islamabad.
Arriving by helicopter, Malala was accompanied by her father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, and her husband, Aseer Malik, whom she married in 2021.
She also visited the school and college she established in Barkana in 2018, which provides free education to around 1,000 girls in a district that previously lacked a functional government girls’ college. She met with students, observed classes, and encouraged them to pursue their education. The Malala Fund continues to support the institution, ensuring quality education for young girls.
Additionally, Malala visited her maternal family’s home and met relatives. Education activist Shahzad Roy, who oversees the Shangla Girls School and College through Zindagi Trust, briefed her on the facilities offered at the institution.
After her brief stay, Malala returned to Islamabad.
Her first visit to Pakistan following the attack was in 2018, and she returned in 2022 to meet victims of the devastating monsoon floods.
