Malala Yousafzai

Malalah Yusafzay born 1998 is a school student from the town of Mingora in Swat District, NWFP, northwestern Pakistan. She is known for her education and women’s rights activism in the Swat Valley, where the Tehrik-i-Taliban regime had banned girls from attending school in early 2009. During that period, at the age of 11, Yousafzai came to prominence through a blog she wrote for the BBC detailing her life under the Taliban regime, their attempts to take control of the valley, and her views on promoting education for girls. Later that year, the Pakistani military intervened, culminating in the expulsion of the Taliban from the Swat Valley. Yousafzai has since been nominated for several awards, and has won Pakistan's first National Peace Prize. On 9 October 2012, Yousafzai was shot in the head and neck in an assassination attempt by a Taliban gunman while returning home on a school bus.She remains unconscious and in critical condition.