Bismillah hir rahman ir rahim.
In the name of God, the most merciful, the
most beneficent.
Your Majesties, Your royal highnesses, distinguished
members of the Norweigan Nobel Committee,
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.
I am also honoured to receive this award together
with Kailash Satyarthi, who has been a champion
for children's rights for a long time.
Twice as long, in fact, than I have been alive.
I am proud that we can work together, we can
work together and show the world that an Indian
and a Pakistani, they can work together and
achieve their goals of children's rights.
Dear brothers and sisters, I was named after
the inspirational Malalai of Maiwand who is
the Pashtun Joan of Arc.
The word Malala means grief stricken", sad",
but in order to lend some happiness to it,
my grandfather would always call me Malala
– The happiest girl in the world" and today
I am very happy that we are together fighting
for an important cause.
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.
I have found that people describe me in many
different ways.
Some people call me the girl who was shot
by the Taliban.
And some, the girl who fought for her rights.
Some people, call me a "Nobel Laureate" now.
However, my brothers still call me that annoying
bossy sister.
As far as I know, I am just a committed and
even stubborn person who wants to see every
child getting quality education, who wants
to see women having equal rights and who wants
peace in every corner of the world.
Education is one of the blessings of life—and
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?
Do you not know that Mohammad, peace be upon
him, the prophet of mercy, he says, do not
harm yourself or others".
And do you not know that the very first word
of the Holy Quran is the word Iqra", which
means read"?
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.
Today, I tell their stories too.
I have brought with me some of my sisters
from Pakistan, from Nigeria and from Syria,
who share this story.
My brave sisters Shazia and Kainat who were
also shot that day on our school bus.
But they have not stopped learning.
And my brave sister Kainat Soomro who went
through severe abuse and extreme violence,
even her brother was killed, but she did not
succumb.
Also my sisters here, whom I have met during
my Malala Fund campaign.
My 16-year-old courageous sister, Mezon from
Syria, who now lives in Jordan as refugee
and goes from tent to tent encouraging girls
and boys to learn.
And my sister Amina, from the North of Nigeria,
where Boko Haram threatens, and stops girls
and even kidnaps girls, just for wanting to
go to school.
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.
(It means I am 5 foot only) I am not a lone
voice, I am not a lone voice, I am many.
I am Malala.
But I am also Shazia.
I am Kainat.
I am Kainat Soomro.
I am Mezon.
I am Amina.
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.
We see many people becoming refugees in Syria,
Gaza and Iraq.
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.
And as I said, we still see, 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, as Kailash Satyarthi mentioned, many
children, especially in India and Pakistan
are deprived of their right to education because
of social taboos, or they have been forced
into child marriage or into child labour.
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, everywhere, 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—especially
in my home of Swat and Shangla.
In my own village, there is still no secondary
school for girls.
And it is my wish and my commitment, and now
my challenge 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 fulfil 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, every child in school.
Dear brothers and sisters, great people, who
brought change, like Martin Luther King and
Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa and Aung San
Suu Kyi, once stood here on this stage.
I hope the steps that Kailash Satyarthi and
I have taken so far and will take on this
journey will also bring change – lasting
change.
My great hope is that this will be the last
time, this will be the last time we must fight
for education.
Let's solve this once and for all.
We have already taken many steps.
Now it is time to take a leap.
It is not time to tell the world leaders to
realise 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.
We ask the world leaders to unite and make
education their top priority.
Fifteen years ago, the world leaders decided
on a set of global goals, the Millennium Development
Goals.
In the years that have followed, we have seen
some progress.
The number of children out of school has been
halved, as Kailash Satyarthi said.
However, the world focused only on primary
education, and progress did not reach everyone.
In year 2015, representatives from all around
the world will meet in the United Nations
to set the next set of goals, the Sustainable
Development Goals.
This will set the world's ambition for the
next generations.
The world can no longer accept, 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 andsecondary 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, the so-called world
of adults may understand it, but we children
don't.
Why is it that countries which we call strong"
are so powerful in creating wars but are so
weak in bringing peace?
Why is it that giving guns is so easy but
giving books is so hard?
Why is it, why is it that making tanks is
so easy, but building schools is so hard?
We are living in the modern age and we believe
that nothing is impossible.
We have reached the moon 45 years ago and
maybe will soon land on Mars.
Then, in this 21st century, we must be able
to give every child quality education.
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 to decide
to be the last , 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.
