United States Congress has approved ‘Malala Yousafzai Scholarship Act’ for Pakistani women.
As per details, US Congress – America’s primary legislative body, has approved ‘Malala Yousafzai Scholarship Act’ for Pakistani women.
The ‘Malala Yousafzai Scholarship Act’ is aimed at the provision of scholarships for Pakistani women under a new merit and needs based scholarship initiative.
The act was approved by US Congress’s lower house – House of Representatives in March 2019 last year, whereas US Senate (the upper house) voted and passed the act on Friday January 1st last week.
‘Malala Yousafzai Scholarship Act’ requires USAID to provide at least 50 per cent of scholarships to Pakistani women across a wide range of disciplines.
The Act has now been forwarded to US President Donald Trump for approval.
Who is Malala Yousafzai?
Malala Yousafzai, often referred to mononymously as Malala, is a Pakistani activist for female education and the youngest Nobel Prize laureate.
She is known for human rights advocacy, especially the education of women and children in her native Swat Valley in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, northwest Pakistan, where the local Pakistani Taliban had at times banned girls from attending school.
In early 2009, when she was 11–12, she wrote a blog under a pseudonym for the BBC Urdu detailing her life during the Pakistani Taliban occupation of Swat. The following summer, journalist Adam B. Ellick made a New York Times documentary about her life as the Pakistani military intervened in the region.
She rose in prominence, giving interviews in print and on television, and she was nominated for the International Children’s Peace Prize by activist Desmond Tutu.
On 9 October 2012, while on a bus in the Swat District, after taking an exam, Yousafzai and two other girls were shot by a Pakistani Taliban gunman in an assassination attempt in retaliation for her activism; the gunman fled the scene.
Yousafzai was hit in the head with a bullet and remained unconscious and in critical condition at the Rawalpindi Institute of Cardiology, but her condition later improved enough for her to be transferred to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, UK.
Following her recovery, Yousafzai became a prominent activist for the right to education. Based in Birmingham, she co-founded the Malala Fund, a non-profit organisation with Shiza Shahid, and in 2013, she co-authored I Am Malala, an international best seller.
In 2014, she was the co-recipient of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize.
