Malala visits hometown Barkana for first time since 2012 attack

Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai visited her hometown, Barkana, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Shangla district on Wednesday, marking her first trip to the area since surviving an assassination attempt by the Taliban in 2012.

Malala, who was targeted at the age of 15 for advocating girls’ education, has since become a global activist and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014.

She currently resides in the United Kingdom.

During her visit, Malala met family members, including her uncle Ramazan, who recently underwent heart surgery.

She also visited her ancestral graveyard. She was accompanied by her father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, and her husband, Aseer Malik.

Read: ‘I’m overwhelmed and happy,’ says Malala upon her arrival in Pakistan for education summit

She inspected the school and college she established in Barkana in 2018, which provides free education to around 1,000 girls. Speaking with students, she encouraged them to focus on their education.

Education activist Shahzad Roy, who oversees the Shangla Girls School under Zindagi Trust, briefed Malala on the institution’s facilities.

This visit follows her previous trips to Pakistan in 2018 and 2022, the latter focusing on flood relief efforts. She returned to Islamabad after the brief visit.