Nobel laureate, women's rights activist Malala Yousafzai calls Gaza ceasefire 'urgent'

Nobel laureate and Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai called for an “urgent” ceasefire in Gaza in an interview with AFP on Friday.

“It is horrifying how many schools have been bombed in Gaza, even more recently the four schools,” she said, referring to four that were hit by Israeli air strikes this week, AFP noted.

“It is deeply concerning because we know that children do not have a future when they’re living under a war, when their schools and homes are destroyed,” Yousafzai said.

The Nobel laureate did not condemn Hamas’s use of schools as bases of terrorism or their use for stockpiling weapons.

“When it comes to humanitarian support, all countries should be making no compromise. They should make sure that all the immediate and urgent needs of people are provided, and UNRWA is an example of that,” she said.

Some Western countries have withdrawn funding for UNRWA due to its ties to Hamas in Gaza and overwhelming evidence that several of its members participated in the October 7 massacre.

Condemning Pakistan's deportation of Afghans fleeing the Taliban

Yousafzai was attacked in 2012 on a school bus in northwest Pakistan’s Swat Valley by Taliban gunmen as a punishment for a blog that she started writing for the BBC’s Urdu service as an 11-year-old, to campaign against the Taliban’s efforts to deny women education.

The attack sparked global outrage, and in response, the Taliban doubled down on its criticism of the women’s rights activist and indicated plans for a possible second assassination attempt. Following her recovery, she founded the Malala Fund with Shiza Shahid, a non-profit designed to advocate for the education of women and girls.

She had to move to the UK after she was shot.

In addition to discussing Gaza with AFP, Yousafzai also condemned Pakistan’s deportation of Afghan refugees who fled due to the Taliban’s rule in Afghanistan.

Human rights monitors have warned that some people sent to Afghanistan faced persecution by the Taliban, who came into power in 2021 and have imposed Islamist rule over the landlocked country between Central and South Asia, barring girls from higher education and excluding women and girls from areas of public life.

“A lot of these girls in Pakistan were studying, they were in school; these women were doing work,” Yousafzai told AFP.

“I hope that Pakistan reverses its policy and that they protect girls and women, especially because of the dark future that they would be witnessing in Afghanistan,” she said.

Recently, the UN invited the Taliban for talks in Doha and bowed to the terrorist organization’s demand that women be barred from the meeting. Human rights organizations widely condemned this act. Yousafzai said the Doha talks made a “compromise on the future of women and girls,” calling for a “principled engagement” with the Taliban.

“World leaders need to realize that when they sit down with the Taliban… and they’re excluding women and girls, they are actually doing the Taliban a favor,” she said.

“I want to call out those countries as well – that includes Canada and France – who have a feminist foreign policy” to “condemn” conversations like the Doha talks.

In April, Yousafzai also expressed support for the people of Gaza after garnering backlash for partnering with Hillary Clinton, who has supported Israel’s war efforts in the embattled coastal enclave.

“I want there to be no confusion about my support for the people of Gaza,” Yousafzai wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “We do not need to see more dead bodies, bombed schools, and starving children to understand that a ceasefire is urgent and necessary.

“I have and will continue to condemn the Israeli government for its violations of international law and war crimes,” the women’s rights activist concluded.

Both Hamas and the Taliban harbor fundamentalist Islamist ideologies.