Malala arrives in Karachi, visits girls’ college

KARACHI: The youngest Nobel Peace laureate, Malala Yousafzai, on Tuesday visited the Government Elementary Girls’ College in Azizabad under tight security arrangements made by the police, Rangers, and intelligence agencies.

She was accompanied by her parents, ZiauddinYousafzai and Toor Pekai Yousafzai, her husband Asser Malik, renowned singer Shehzad Roy, Karachi University Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Khalid Iraqi among others. She stayed at the institute for an hour and discussed the importance of access to quality education.

Malala is a UN Messenger of Peace with special focus on girls’ literacy and education. She arrived in Pakistan on the Qatar Airways flight 604 to visit inundated areas of the country. She is visiting her home country for the second time after surviving a terrorist attack in 2012. Last time, she visited her hometown Swat in March 2018. This time she is also likely to extend assistance from the Malala Fund for flood victims.

According to some media reports, the Malala Fund, last month, issued an emergency relief grant to the International Rescue Committee to provide psycho-social support to girls and women in flood-hit Sindh and Balochistan. The funding will also be used to deliver emergency education services to ensure girls continue their education and rehabilitate 10 damaged state-run girls’ schools.

In October 2012, Malala, who is now 25-year-old, was shot in the head when she was 15 years old by the Taliban gunmen in Swat. She was on the way back home from her school. However, she was shifted to the military hospital in Peshawar and survived the injuries. Afterwards, she left for London for further treatment. During the insurgency in Swat, she raised her voice for girls’ education when terrorists started to blow up girls’ schools and denied women access to education.