Malala Yousafzai is a women's rights and children's activist. She was born in 1997 in Pakistan and became engaged in women's right to education in 2008 when she gave a speech: "How dare the Taliban take away my basic right to education?" as a reaction on Taliban's continous attacks on girls' school in Swat. Since then she has continued criticising Taliban and in 2009 she started blogging for BBC using a name Gul Makai for safety reasons. However, she was revealed at the end of the same year and received death treats. In 2012 she was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman on her way home from school. She survived and wrote a book titled: "I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban."

In 2013 the European Parliament awarded Yousafzai the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. That same year, she was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. She didn't win the prize, but was named a nominee again in March 2014.