Nobel Prize laureate Malala visits Kurdistan for education awareness initiative

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – A Nobel Prize laureate and international women’s activist and survivor of violence Malala Yousafzai is visiting the Kurdistan Region to raise awareness on female education for vulnerable populations.

She met with the head of the Region's Foreign Relations Department Falah Mustafa, who hailed Yousafzai's first visit to the Kurdistan Region in a statement, hoping her trip would help raise the voice of Kurdish Yezidi women and girls in order for their genocide to be recognized on an international level.

The youngest-ever Nobel Prize laureate who was raised in Pakistan but now lives in the United Kingdom had said in her meeting with Mustafa that she was eager to meet with the Yezidi women survivors of ISIS, wanting to hear their stories.

The Kurdistan Region has provided shelter to tens of thousands of Yezidis who fled after they were targeted by ISIS in 2014. More than 15,000 babies have been born in camps to Yezidi parents, according to health officials in Duhok.

Yousafzai added her people had also suffered at the hands of terror, displacement and plights.

She hoped for the development of education for children. She said she would continue to hold her message to support children women and girls.

Yousafzai will hold a session on female empowerment with an organization in Erbil.

She first gained recognition blogging for the BBC Urdu in 2009 about growing up under the influence of the Taliban in Pakistan. Using the name "Gul Makai," she described being forced to stay at home, and she questioned the motives of the Taliban.

In 2012, Taliban gunmen attacked Yousafzai while she was seated on a bus heading home from school. She has since fled to the United Kingdom and undergone several surgeries for her injuries.

The 20-year-old has now finished school and founded the Malala Fund with the goal of supporting 130 million of the “the most vulnerable girls denied an education” across the world.