Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani campaigner for girls' education who survived an assassination attempt by the Taliban last year, has been awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought by the European Parliament. We congratulate Malala and welcome the award as an effort to promote schooling for the huge number of children worldwide who are deprived of education opportunities.
In her speech at the Nov. 20 award ceremony in Strasbourg, France, Malala pointed to the plight of as many as 57 million children around the world who are denied opportunities to go to school. Those children "do not want an iPhone, a PlayStation or chocolate. They just want a book and a pen," she said.
She urged the Western world to see beyond their borders "to the suffering countries where people are still deprived of their basic rights, their freedom of thought is suppressed, freedom of speech is enchained." Many children in those countries "have no food to eat, no water to drink, and children are starving for education," she said.