LONDON: Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani girl who was shot by the Taliban last year for demanding education for girls, said that she intends to return to her home country only after she completes her education.
“I want to go back to Pakistan but first of all I need to be fully empowered… and to make myself powerful, I only need one thing, that is education, so I will get education, then I’ll go back to Pakistan,” Malala said in an interview.
The 16-year-old Malala, who is among the forerunners for the Nobel Peace Prize which will be awarded on Friday, said that she believes extremism can only be rooted out by educating the next generation.
“Dialogue is the only way to achieve peace and that extremism can only be rooted out by educating the next generation,” she said.
The teenager, who was born in Swat valley of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in July 1997, said that she was born in a society that didn’t value daughters.
“When I was born, some of our relatives came to our house and told my mother, don’t worry, next time you will have a son… For my brothers it was easy to think about the future, they can be anything they want. But for me it was hard… I wanted to become educated and I wanted to empower myself with knowledge,” she said.
Talking about her expectations for winning a Nobel prize, Malala said that “If I win Nobel Peace Prize, it would be a great opportunity for me, but if I don’t get it, it’s not important because my goal is not to get Nobel Peace Prize, my goal is to get peace and my goal is to see education of every child.”
