Malala Yousafzai Calls on World Powers to Spend Their Money on ‘Books, Not Bullets’

The 18-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner is certainly wise beyond her years, and global leaders would do well to heed her latest piece of advice.

From Foreign Policy magazine:

Nobel Peace Prize-winner Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani schoolgirl shot by the Taliban after fighting for her right to go to school, called on the United States and other leading powers Monday to devote more money towards providing educational opportunities to needy children around the world.

“World leaders…are only focusing on six years of education, or nine years,” she said at a panel event co-hosted by Foreign Policy, Vital Voices, and the Malala Fund at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington. “This is not how we are going to achieve success in our future. It is necessary we provide 12 years of quality education to every child.”

Yousafzai has become the face of the global movement for women’s education and in 2014, when she was just 17, became the youngest ever recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. Speaking to a crowd of more than 150 at the FP event, Yousafzai emphasized the role poor governance plays in hindering education — especially for girls — and said countries should spend more on schools and less on their militaries. “Books, not bullets,” she said. “Books, not bombs.”

—Posted by Natasha Hakimi Zapata