As a teenager, it’s easy to feel lost, to get swallowed up into the mob mentality and lose your voice. We’ve all been victim to that; anyone who says that they haven’t is either lying or under the age of 13 years. So when a teenage girl undertakes such an incredible task of courage, one that adults cover in fear of doing, the event takes utmost significance. This is exactly what Malala Yousafzai, a huge inspiration to me and so many other girls did.
Being only fourteen years old did not matter to Malala Yousafzai. In a short fourteen years she has won fame for fighting for peace, women’s rights and humanity. She won the National Peace award in Pakistan for all her efforts. In 2009- at only the age of 11- she fought Taliban insurgency that tried to take over her village of Swat. She wanted to set up her own political party which would campaign the right of young Pakistani girls to education.
This girl- this heroine- was shot by a member of the Taliban, in the head and neck, and was in a critical condition. The Taliban called her work ‘obscenity’. I call it heroism. They tried to silence this girl forever- they tried, and are still trying, to silence the ideas of freedom, rights and equality forever. But they will not win this war, not while human beings like Malala breathe and fight.
An army chief called Malala ‘an icon of courage and hope’. She’s more than that, she’s the dawn of a new generation, the leader of a revolution in which humanity and justice rules over the whole world. On her blog she writes about how she couldn’t go to school anymore and how she always was living in fear for she would get caught going there.
The Taliban broke many human rights laws. These laws were; The right to an education, to express yourself, have an opinion and see each other. The Taliban believe that women aren’t as men and that they don’t have the same rights. When she was shot, she survived only to come back as feisty as ever with a new grown audience and supporters.
So, Malala is a major human rights hero. She fought for every single right that was being taken away from her and the rest of the females in the world. She was the voice to the silence that the woman in the world had been suffering for many years, the injustice of unequal rights.