Bismillah hir rahman ir rahim. In the name of God, the most merciful, the most beneficent. Dear sisters and brothers, today is a day of great happiness for me. Thank you all for your continued support and love. Thank you for the letters and cards that I still receive from all over the world. Your kind and encouraging words strengthen and inspire me. I want to thank my parents for their unconditional love. Thanks to my dad for not chopping off my wings and letting me fly. Thank you to my mother for inspiring me to be patient and always speak the truth - what we firmly believe is the true message of Islam. And thank you also to all my wonderful teachers, who inspired me to believe in myself and to be courageous. I am proud, well, in fact, I am very proud to be the first Pashtun, the first Pakistani and the youngest to receive this award. Along with that, I'm pretty sure I'm also the first recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize who still fights with his younger brothers. I want there to be peace everywhere, but my brothers and I are still working on it. I am also honored to receive this award along with Kailash Satyarthi, who has long been an advocate for children's rights. Twice as long, in fact, that I've been alive. I am proud that we can work together, we can work together and show the world that an Indian and a Pakistani can work together and achieve their children's rights goals.
Dear brothers and sisters, I was named after the inspiration Malalai de Maiwand who is the Pashtun Joan of Arc. The word Malala means grief-stricken ", sad", but to give her happiness my grandfather always called me Malala - The happiest girl in the world "and today I am very happy that we were fighting together for one This award is not just for me. It is for those forgotten children who want an education. It is for these scared children who want peace. It is for these speechless children who want change. I am here for stand up for their rights, raise your voice.
Now is not the time to pity them. It is not time to pity them. It is time to act so it becomes the last time, the last time, so this is the last time we see a child deprived of an education. I have found that people describe me in different ways. Some people call me the girl who was shot by the Taliban. And others, the girl who fought for her rights Some people call me a "Nobel Prize" m now. However, my brothers still call me that boring bossy sister. As far as I know, I am just t a committed and even stubborn person who wants to see every child receive a quality education, who wants to see women have equal rights and who wants peace in all corners of the world. Education is one of life's blessings - and one of its necessities. This has been my experience over the 17 years of my life. In my heavenly home, Swat, I have always loved learning and discovering new things. I remember when my friends and I decorated our hands with henna on special occasions. And instead of drawing flowers and patterns, we would paint our hands with formulas and math equations.
We were thirsty for education, we were thirsty for education because our future was there in this classroom. We would sit and learn and read together. We loved to wear neat and tidy school uniforms and would sit there with big dreams in our eyes. We wanted to make our parents proud and prove that we can also excel in our studies and achieve these goals, which some believe only boys can. But things did not stay the same. When I was in Swat, which was a place of tourism and beauty, I suddenly turned into a place of terrorism. I was just ten years old when over 400 schools were destroyed. The women were whipped. People have been killed. And our sweet dreams turned into nightmares.
Education has gone from a right to a crime. The girls were prevented from going to school. When my world suddenly changed, my priorities changed too. I had two options. One was to remain silent and wait to be killed. And the second was to speak up and be killed. I chose the second.
I decided to talk. We couldn't just sit back and watch these injustices of terrorists deny our rights, ruthlessly kill people and abuse the name of Islam. We decided to raise our voices and say to them: Did you not learn, did you not learn that in the Holy Quran Allah says: if you kill a person, it is as if you kill the whole humanity? Do you not know that Mohammad, peace be upon him, the prophet of mercy, he said, do not harm yourself or others. ”And do you not know that the very first word of the Holy Quran is the word Iqra ", which means to read"? The terrorists tried to stop us and attacked me and my friends who are here today, on our school bus in 2012, but neither their ideas nor their bullets were able to win. We survived. And since that day our voices have grown louder. I tell my story, not because it is unique, but because it is not. story of many girls.
Today, I also tell their stories. I brought with me some of my sisters from Pakistan, Nigeria and Syria, who share this story. My brave sisters Shazia and Kainat who were also shot that day in our school bus. But they haven't stopped learning. And my brave sister Kainat Soomro who suffered severe abuse and extreme violence, even her brother was killed, but she did not succumb. Also my sisters here, whom I met during my Malala Fund campaign. My courageous 16 year old sister, Mezon from Syria, who now lives in Jordan as a refugee and goes from tent to tent to encourage girls and boys to learn. And my sister Amina, from northern Nigeria, where Boko Haram threatens, arrests girls and even kidnaps girls, just to want to go to school. Although I appear as a girl, although I appear as a girl, a person, who is 5ft 2in tall if you include my high heels. (It means I'm only 5ft tall) I'm not a lonely voice, I'm not a lonely voice, I'm many. I am Malala. But I am also Shazia. I am Kainat. I am Kainat Soomro. I am Mezon. I am Amina. I am these 66 million girls deprived of an education. And today, I am not raising my voice, it is the voice of these 66 million girls. Sometimes people like to ask me why girls should go to school, why is it important to them. But I think the most important question is why they shouldn't, why shouldn't they be allowed to go to school.
Dear sisters and brothers, today in half of the world we see rapid progress and development. However, in many countries millions of people still suffer from the very old problems of war, poverty and injustice. We always see conflicts in which innocent people lose their lives and children are orphaned. We see many people becoming refugees in Syria, Gaza and Iraq. In Afghanistan, families are being killed in suicide and bomb attacks. Many children in Africa do not have access to education due to poverty. And as I said, we still see, we still see girls who do not have the freedom to go to school in northern Nigeria.
Many children in countries like Pakistan and India, as Kailash Satyarthi mentioned, many children, especially in India and Pakistan, are deprived of their right to education due to social taboos, or have been forced into child marriage or child labor. One of my very good classmates, the same age as me, who had always been a bold and confident girl, dreamed of becoming a doctor.
But his dream remained a dream. At the age of 12, she was forced to marry. And then soon she had a son, she had a child when she herself was still a child - only 14 years old. I know she could have been a really good doctor. But she couldn't ... because she was a girl. Her story is why I dedicate the Nobel Peace Prize money to the Malala Fund, to help give girls a quality education, everywhere, everywhere and to make their voices heard. The first place this funding will go is where my heart is, to build schools in Pakistan - especially in my home in Swat and Shangla. In my own village, there is still no secondary school for girls. And this is my wish and my commitment, and now my challenge to build one so that my friends and sisters can go to school and receive a quality education and have this opportunity to make their dreams come true. This is where I will start, but this is not where I will end. I will continue this fight until I see every child, every child in school.
Dear brothers and sisters, great people, who made the change like Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa and Aung San Suu Kyi, once stood here on this stage. I hope that the steps Kailash Satyarthi and I have taken so far and that we will take on this journey will also bring about a change - a lasting change. My great hope is that this will be the last time, this will be the last time we have to fight for education. Let's solve this once and for all. We have already taken many steps. Now is the time to take a leap. Now is not the time to tell world leaders to realize the importance of education - they already know this - that their own children are in good schools. Now is the time to call them to act for the rest of the children of the world. We call on world leaders to unite and make education their top priority.
Fifteen years ago, world leaders decided on a set of global goals, the Millennium Development Goals. In the years since, we have seen progress. The number of out-of-school children has been cut in half, as Kailash Satyarthi said. However, the world has focused solely on primary education, and progress has not reached everyone. In 2015, representatives from around the world will meet at the United Nations to set the next set of goals, the Sustainable Development Goals. This will define the ambition of the world for the next generations.
The world can no longer accept, the world can no longer accept that basic education is sufficient. Why do leaders accept that for children in developing countries only basic literacy is sufficient, while their own children do their homework in algebra, mathematics, science and physics? Leaders must seize this opportunity to ensure free, quality primary and secondary education for every child. Some would say it's impractical, too expensive, or too difficult. Or maybe even impossible. But it's time for the world to think bigger.
Dear sisters and brothers, the so-called adult world can understand it, but we children do not understand it. Why are the countries we call strong "so powerful at creating wars but so weak at bringing peace? Why is giving arms so easy but giving books so difficult? Why, why is it? what making tanks is so easy, but building schools is so hard? We live in the modern age and we believe that nothing is impossible. We reached the moon 45 years ago and maybe will soon land on Mars Then, in this 21st century, we must be able to give every child a quality education.
Dear brothers and sisters, dear comrades, we must work ... not wait. Not just politicians and world leaders, we all need to contribute. Me. You. We. It's our duty. Let's become the first generation to decide to be the last, let's become the first generation to decide to be the last to see empty classrooms, lost childhoods and wasted potentials. Whether this is the last time a girl or a boy spends their childhood in a factory. May this be the last time a girl is forced into an early marriage. May this be the last time a child loses his life in war. May this be the last time we see a child out of school. May this end with us. Let's start this ending ... together ... today ... here, now. Let's start this ending now. Thank you so much.