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Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teen who was attacked by Taliban militants for promoting education for girls, will share the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize with Kailash Satyarthi, an Indian campaigner against exploitation of children.

, 17, defied the Taliban in her town of Mingora in Swat Valley, near the volatile western frontier dividing Pakistan and Afghanistan. In October 2012, 

Taliban militiamen boarded a school bus she was on, singled her out and shot her in the left side of the head

. Two other girls were also wounded in the attack.


Left in critical condition, Yousafzai received an outpouring of international support and was moved to the U.K. for treatment.

"Malala battled for her life, and came back to become an international ambassador for the rights of girls to be educated," NPR's Julie McCarthy says.

, telling delegates that the Taliban "thought that bullets would silence us, but they failed.


"The terrorists thought that they would change my aims and stop my ambitions," she said defiantly, "but nothing changed in my life, except this: Weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born."

 and was first nominated for the Peace Prize last year. She now lives in Birmingham, England, but the Taliban have 

Yousafzai is the youngest-ever Nobel laureate.

Speaking in Birmingham hours after the award was announced, Yousafzai said she was in chemistry class when her teacher informed her she'd won.

"I decided not to leave school," the education campaigner said. "I treated it like a normal day."

She called the Peace Prize a "precious award" and "a great honor" and said her co-recipient, Satyarthi, "totally deserved" the prize.

"This is not the end. This is really the beginning. I want to see every child going to school," she said.


Satyarthi, 60, is a longtime activist against child labor and for better education of children in South Asia. In his 20s, he gave up a career as an electrical engineer and "dedicated his life to helping the millions of children in India who are forced into slavery by powerful and corrupt business- and landowners," 

 for Justice & Human Rights calls Satyarthi "India's lodestar for the abolition of child labor."


Nobel Peace Prize Winners Share Connection In Advocating For Children

"Since 1980, he has led the rescue of over 75,000 bonded and child slaves in India and developed a successful model for their education and rehabilitation. Kailash has emancipated thousands of children from bonded labor, a form of slavery where a desperate family typically borrows needed funds from a lender (sums as little as $35) and is forced to hand over a child as surety until the funds can be repaid," the RFK Center says.

, Satyarthi decried the rise of female feticide — or so-called selective abortions — in India, explaining: "The parents feel that the boy is a help for the future, where the girl is a liability.
"If we spend money on her, then we have to spend money on her marriage, dowry probably, and then if something goes wrong, then we are always sufferers. So better that that girl is not born," he said, explaining the reasoning of some parents in India.  Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

The Pakistani teen who was attacked by the Taliban and an Indian campaigner against exploitation of children were notified Friday.

Malala Yousafzai, Kailash Satyarthi share Nobel Peace Prize

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