Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai urges world to confront Taliban’s ‘gender apartheid’ in opposition to ladies
JOHANNESBURG — Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai mentioned Tuesday that the world wants to acknowledge and confront the “gender apartheid” in opposition to ladies and ladies imposed by the Taliban since they seized energy in Afghanistan greater than two years in the past.
She urged the worldwide neighborhood to take collective and pressing motion to finish the “dark days” in Afghanistan. Yousafzai was awarded the peace prize in 2014 on the age of 17 for her struggle for ladies’ schooling in her dwelling nation, Pakistan. She is the youngest Nobel laureate.
Two years earlier, she survived an assassination try by the Pakistani Taliban – a separate militant group however an ally of the Afghan Taliban – when she was shot within the head on a bus after college.
The 26-year-old activist spoke to The Associated Press after delivering the annual Nelson Mandela lecture in Johannesburg on the tenth anniversary of the loss of life of South Africa’s anti-apartheid chief and Nobel laureate.
Yousafzai can be the youngest individual to present the lecture, following within the footsteps of previous lecturers, together with former President Barack Obama, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres and philanthropist and Microsoft founder Bill Gates.
She devoted her speech to Afghan ladies and ladies, hoping to re-focus the world’s consideration on their oppression amid the wars in Gaza and Ukraine.
“It took a bullet to my head for the world to stand with me,” she mentioned. “What will it take for the world to stand with girls in Afghanistan?”
Since their takeover, the Taliban have banned schooling for ladies past the sixth grade and imposed extreme restrictions on ladies, barring them from work and most public areas and searching for to implement their strict interpretation of Islamic regulation, or Sharia.
“Afghanistan has only seen dark days after it fell to the Taliban,” Yousafzai mentioned within the AP interview. “It has been two and half years and most girls have not seen school again.”
Yousafzai appealed to the United Nations to “recognize the current state of Afghanistan as a gender apartheid” and cited latest stories of “women being detained, put into prisons and beaten and even put into forced marriages.”
“Two and a half years is a very long time,” Yousafzai mentioned and added that it might value a girl her future.
Yousafzai additionally described as “heartbreaking” Islamabad’s new coverage of forceful deportations of Afghans who’re in Pakistan illegally, saying that deporting them would put the lives of girls and ladies who’re pressured to return in danger.
She additionally referred to as for a right away cease-fire within the Israel-Hamas warfare and decried that “so many children’s and women’s lives (have been) lost” in besieged Gaza.
The warfare – sparked by the militant Hamas group’s unprecedented Oct. 7 assault that killed about 1,200 folks in Israel – has to date killed greater than 15,000 folks in Gaza, a majority of them ladies and kids, based on the Health Ministry within the Hamas-run Gaza, which doesn’t differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths.
Yousafzai mentioned the world should maintain accountable these on each side who’ve violated worldwide regulation and dedicated warfare crimes.
“We need to make sure that we always are on the side of the innocent people,” she mentioned. “And we are advocating for protecting them and we are advocating for stopping more wars and conflicts.”
Yousafzai praised the awarding of this yr’s Nobel Peace Prize to Iranian ladies’s rights and pro-democracy activist Narges Mohammadi, who stays imprisoned in Tehran’s infamous Evin Prison. Mohammadi’s youngsters are attributable to settle for the Nobel medal and diploma on her behalf on Sunday.
“When we see more women being appreciated for their tireless efforts to bring justice, to fight against oppression and to fight against gender discrimination, it gives us hope because you realize that you are not alone,” Yousafzai mentioned.
Yousafzai started her struggle in opposition to the oppression of girls and ladies by writing and publishing blogs on the age off 11.
She had a heartfelt message for younger ladies as we speak, urging them to seek out their voice.
“Don’t wait for anyone else to speak for you,” she mentioned. “You have the power to stand up for yourself.”
