CBC News reports, “Children’s rights activist Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan says she is honoured to share this year’s Nobel Peace Prize with India’s Kailash Satyarthi, whose work also involves protecting the interests of young people.

(Susan Walsh/AP Photo)

“I’m proud that I’m the first Pakistani and first the young woman, or the first young person, who is getting this  award,” Yousafzai, 17, told journalists in Birmingham, England, where she now lives after Norwegian Nobel Committee chair Thorbjørn Jagland announced the honour in Oslo.

She was at school when the announcement was made Friday. Yousafzai is the youngest winner of a Nobel Prize. The previous youngest laureate was British scientist William Lawrence Bragg, who won for physics in 1915 at age 25.

As for the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner, Yousafzai eclipses Yemeni activist Tawakkol Karman, who won in 2011 at 32.

Yousafzai and Satyarthi are being honoured for “their struggle against the suppression of children and young people, and for the right of all children to education,” the committee said.

The committee said it “regards it as an important point for a Hindu and a Muslim, an Indian and a Pakistani, to join in a common struggle for education and against extremism.”

She also paid homage to her father.

“I thank my father for not clipping my wings. I thank him for letting me fly.”

An outspoken advocate for girls’ education, Yousafzai was critically injured on Oct. 9, 2012, when a gunman shot her in the head while she was riding home on a school bus in the city of Mingora. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.

“I had really two options,” she said Friday in an impromptu address after the award was announced.

“One was not to speak and wait to be killed. And the second was to speak up and then be killed.

“And I chose the second one, because at that time there was terrorism, women were not allowed to go outside of their houses, ’cause education was totally banned. People were killed. At that time, I needed to raise my voice, because I wanted to go back to school.””

Source: CBC News