Nobel peace prize winner Malala Yousafzai visited the world’s largest refugee camp on her 19th birthday on Tuesday to draw attention to the global refugee crisis.
Her visit comes in wake of increasing pressure on Kenya’s Dadaab camp to close after a quarter-century, reported the Associated Press.Malala, the 18-year-old schoolgirl from Swat, who was 14 when shot in the valley after her support for girls’ education angered Taliban militants, has been in contact with a group of girls in Dadaab since 2015 and was looking forward to meeting them and others, said her spokesperson Taylor Royle.“I am here to speak for my unheard sisters of Somalia striving for education every day,” Malala said on Tuesday, explaining that on each birthday she chooses a region where girls’ education is neglected and needs attention.
Kenya says Dadaab camp, which hosts more than 300,000 mostly Somali refugees, will be closed next year because it has become a security liability. The camp is in eastern Kenya, near its border with Somalia.The possibility that the camp will be closed brings yet more uncertainty to the refugees, who face the prospect of returning to a Somalia still plagued with conflict.
Kenya insists any returns will be voluntary, even as the international community has urged caution and warned against forceful evictions.
The family of Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai have become millionaires from her best-selling memoirs and speaking engagements, MailOnline stated on Wednesday.
Four years after she was shot in Pakistan, MailOnline revealed that a company set up to protect the rights to her life story has made a pre-tax profit of £1.1million.
The 18-year-old schoolgirl — who was 14 when shot in the Swat Valley after her support for girls’ education angered Taliban militants — is a joint shareholder of the company, Salarzai Ltd.
The firm, whose other joint shareholders are her father Ziauddin Yousafzai and her mother Toor Pekai, had £2.2million in the bank by August last year, reported The Times correspondent Fariha Karim. It was also claimed by Sun reporter Stephen Moyes that Malala, who became the world’s youngest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014, will pay £200,000 in UK tax on her earnings last year.
Her book I Am Malala, published in 2013 in Britain, in a deal estimated at £2 million has since sold at least 1.8 million copies worldwide, tells the story of her growing up in Pakistan.
Malala has become a sought-after speaker since her ordeal, and a report by the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC claims she is paid a whopping £114,000 per speech.
London-based Salarzai, which was set up in 2013, is a separate operation to the charitable Malala Fund which aims to help girls safely complete secondary education worldwide, reported The Times.
A spokesman for Malala told MailOnline on Wednesday: “Since the publication of Malala’s book, Malala and her family have donated more than $1 million (£750,000) to charities, mostly for education-focused projects across the world including Pakistan.”
Malala has become a sought-after speaker since her horrifying ordeal, and a report by the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC claims she is paid a whopping £114,000 per speech.
Just last week Malala told a crowd in London’s Trafalgar Square at a memorial to Jo Cox that the murdered MP, who was killed earlier this month in West Yorkshire, was a ‘modern day suffragette’.
