- Title: LEBANON-MALALA Nobel winner Malala opens school for Syrian refugees
- Date: 12th July 2015
- Summary: HANDS LIGHTING CANDLES ON BIRTHDAY CAKE SCHOOL GIRLS AND JOURNALISTS WISHING YOUSAFZAI HAPPY BIRTHDAY
- Embargoed: 27th July 2015 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Lebanon
- Country: Lebanon
- Topics: General
- Reuters ID: LVA7LZQRD2H8CA99LIANKWLO5VK4
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: Malala Yousafzai, the youngest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, celebrated her 18th birthday in Lebanon on Sunday (July 12) by opening a school for Syrian refugee girls, as she called on world leaders to invest in "books not bullets."
Malala became a symbol of defiance after she was shot on a school bus in Pakistan in 2012 in an assassination attempt by the Taliban for advocating girls' rights to education. She continued campaigning and won the Nobel Prize in 2014.
Her father, Ziauddin, who was beside her as she walked into the new school bearing her name, said this was a big day for her because she had come a long way from being a local activist in the Swat Valley to a global symbol for the campaign for girls education.
''You see this is her eighteenth birthday, and she is kind of entering from childhood to adulthood and for us it's a great day and the mission she was carrying with her life when she was hardly eleven years old in Swat Valley when Taliban banned girls' education and they bombed many, many schools, she stood for her right. And after that take, the small moment on a very local level, it turned into a global campaign for education,'' Yousafzai said.
The Malala Fund, a non-profit organisation that supports local education projects, paid for the school in the Bekaa Valley, close to the Syrian border. It can host up to 200 girls aged 14 to 18.
"Today on my first day as an adult, on behalf of the world's children, I demand of leaders we must invest in books instead of bullets," Malala said in a speech to refugee schoolchildren, their parents, volunteers and employees of Kayany and other non-governmental agencies working with refugees in Lebanon.
"I decided to be in Lebanon because I believe that the voices of the Syrian refugees need to be heard and they have been ignored for so long," Malala told Reuters in a schoolroom decorated with drawings of butterflies.
Lebanon is home to 1.2 million of the 4 million refugees that have fled the war in Syria. There are about 500,000 Syrian children of school age in Lebanon, but only a fifth are in formal education.
Lebanon, which allows informal settlements on land rented by refugees, says it can no longer cope with the influx from Syria's four-year conflict. One in four people living in Lebanon is now a refugee.
Malala was feted with songs and a birthday cake. Moved to tears by the girls, she was modest when asked for advice.
"When I met these girls, and they are amazing, I think they don't need any message, they don't need any other advice because they know that education is very important for them."
The U.N. says the number of Syrian refugees in neighbouring countries is expected to reach 4.27 million by the end of the year. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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