ISLAMABAD: Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and Pakistani education activist Malala Yousafzai, in her first visit since she was attacked, arrived Pakistan late on Wednesday.
Malala, the youngest Nobel Prize laureate, has returned to Pakistan nearly six years after she had been flown to London for treatment since she was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman for advocating education for girls in 2012.
Malala was received by government and security officials at the Benazir Bhutto International Airport in Islamabad and escorted as per VIP protocol directly from the airport to the hotel, where she will stay during her four-day visit in Pakistan. Precise details of her itinerary have been “kept secret in wake of the sensitivity surrounding the visit.
She has arrived from London on board a special plane, she had a stopover in Dubai. She is accompanied by her family including her parents and two brothers.
Malala will meet Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and other senior government functionaries during her four-day stay in the country.
She is the youngest person to win the Nobel peace prize in 2014 when she was 17.
Pakistani education activist Malala Yousafzai has become only the sixth person, and the youngest, to receive honorary Canadian citizenship.
At 19, Yousafzai became the youngest Messenger of Peace, the highest honour given by the UN for an initial period of two years in 2017 to promote girls’ education.
The Nobel laureate came to prominence when she was shot in the head in 2012 as she was leaving school in Pakistan’s Swat valley, northwest of the country’s capital, Islamabad, since then, Malala’s advocacy has grown into an international movement and she has become a global celebrity.
In January 2009, Malala Yousafzai began to keep a diary, in which she explained how she had been affected by the Taliban, and what life was like for her and her peers under them.
The brave Pakistani girl wrote then under the pen name “Gul Makai”, the name of the heroine from a local Pashtun folk tale.
