After the Taliban took over Afghanistan, Malala Yusufzai called on the international community to protect women and children.
Richard Stonehouse/Getty Images
Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousufzai said on Sunday that she was worried that the Taliban’s obstruction of Afghan girls’ education would not be as temporary as claimed.
Yousafzai was shot and killed by the Pakistani Taliban in 2012 for fighting for girls’ education. He told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, “I’m worried about the ban they are now announcing. They call it temporary. In fact, it may not be temporary. .”
She pointed out that a similar ban in 1996 “lasted for five years.”
After seizing power in August, the hardline Islamic Taliban excluded girls from returning to secondary school in September and ordered boys to return to class.
The Taliban claim that they will allow girls to return once they ensure safety and stricter quarantine based on their interpretation of Sharia law-but many are skeptical.
Yousafzai said:
We call on the Taliban to immediately allow girls to receive a complete education, and we call on G20 leaders and other world leaders to ensure that the rights of girls are protected in Afghanistan.
The 24-year-old activist revealed on Twitter this week that she has tied the knot with her partner Asser Malik and sent an open letter last month urging the lifting of the ban.
At the age of 15, Yousafzai was shot in the head by Pakistani Taliban fighters from the Taliban branch of Afghanistan while riding a school bus in her hometown in the Swat Valley.
Read | Taliban says ISIS presence in Afghanistan is “controlled”
She recovered after several months of treatment at home and abroad, and then co-authored a best-selling memoir called “I am Malala”.
In 2014, Yusufzai, who was only 17 years old, and Kailash Satyarthi, an Indian child rights activist, won the Nobel Peace Prize together.
She graduated from Oxford University last year with a degree in philosophy, politics and economics.
