What is the main message of Malala Yousafzai's Nobel Prize speech?
In 2014, Malala Yousafzai was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with a children’s rights activist, Kailash Satyarthi. The main message that she presents in her acceptance speech is her commitment to making education a reality, not just a right, for all children. Equally, she emphasizes that education must be achieved along with peace, and that all nations should prioritize education over war.
She begins her acceptance speech by thanking many people, including those who awarded them the prize, and acknowledging Satyarthi’s contributions. She discusses elements of her current life as it is changing because of the award, as well as occurrences that helped lead to her becoming the youngest person ever to receive it.
Yousafzai, then seventeen years old, insists that she accepts the award on behalf of all children, and that she will stand up for their rights.
This award is not just for me. It is for...
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those forgotten children who want an education. It is for those frightened children who want peace. It is for those voiceless children who want change.
Naming education as a blessing and a necessity, she speaks of her thirst for education in her native Swat region of Pakistan. This was “paradise” before the Taliban takeover. When education was prohibited for girls, she spoke out. The attempt on her life did not silence her, but instead renewed her belief in the power of education.
Yousafzai refers to her commonalities with all girls and refers to her many sisters in the audience and around the world—many of whom she met through her campaign for the Malala Fund that she established. Naming and identifying with a number of individuals, she states,
I am those 66 million girls who are deprived of education. And today I am not raising my voice, it is the voice of those 66 million girls.
Yousafzai then reviews the violence and hardship to which children are subjected every day because of war, poverty, and injustice. She insists that world leaders know that education is valuable but do too little to help children achieve it. She presents her firm commitment to fighting, in part through the Fund, “until [she] see[s] every child in school.”
She asks why many countries favor war over peace and privilege arms manufacture over education.
Why is it that giving guns is so easy, but giving books is so hard? Why is it that making tanks is so easy, but building schools is so hard?
She ends with a series of sentences that begin with the phrase “let us” to encourage everyone to act toward achieving the goals she has laid out, including putting an end to “lost childhoods and wasted potentials.”
References
What is the main message of Malala?
Malala Yousafzai's main message in her memoir I Am Malala stresses the importance of education for young girls. She speaks out against the way the Taliban restricts women's lives, particularly in denying them an education. Malala's views on the importance of learning come from her unique upbringing: her parents allowed her to attend school and receive a broad liberal arts education, which is uncommon for young girls in Pakistan. Despite the Taliban's attempt to silence Malala by killing her, she only grows ever more determined to speak out against their injustices and prejudice.
The other main message of the memoir is that of the importance of courage. Malala's activism is successful because she fights against oppression despite the odds stacked against her. The Taliban is both brutal and powerful, yet Malala refuses to remain silent in her quest. Even her difficult recovery from the failed assassination attempt takes courage: she must go through pain and impaired faculties she once took for granted in order to be able to continue her activist work.
These two messages are intertwined. Without courage, Malala would have been unable to speak up for women's rights and education. Both education and courage give a person agency, and Malala wants women around the world to achieve this.