Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai, who became the world’s youngest Nobel Prize laureate in 2014, flew to Pakistan on Tuesday to meet flood victims.
The trip marks her second visit to her home country since she was flown to Britain after getting shot in the head by the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also known as the Pakistani Taliban, in 2012.
The militant group, which shares a common ideology with the Afghan Taliban, initiated an assassination attempt against Yousafzai, a girls’ education advocate, when she was 15 years old.
While a military crackdown ended the group’s insurgency in 2014, unrest re-emerged last year when the Afghan Taliban rose to power again.
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In the past few weeks, the TTP has declared that it has launched dozens of attacks against anti-Taliban elders and security forces.
An attack on Monday, which resulted in the death of a school bus driver, sparked a protest for peace. This public demonstration involved students and teachers walking out of schools, including the one attended by Yousafzai and established by her father. The TTP denied any involvement in the attack.
Yousafzai, who flew to Karachi on Tuesday, will start surveying the areas around Pakistan that were destroyed by recent monsoon flooding.
In a statement, Yousafzai’s organization, the Malala Fund, said it seeks “to help keep international attention focused on the impact of floods in Pakistan and reinforce the need for critical humanitarian aid.”
Pakistan’s recent floods, which have reportedly placed a third of the South Asian country underwater, have resulted in the deaths of around 1,700 residents, the displacement of around eight million people and damages estimated to be worth about $28 billion.
Featured Image via Generation Z
