Malala Yousafzai raises the RAW (Reach All Women) in War Anna Politkovskaya Award after receiving it at the Southbank Centre in London

Malala is presented the 2013 Peter J. Gomes Humanitarian Award by Director of the Harvard Foundation and professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School Dr. S. Allen Counter in September.

One person for the world stage today, an unlikely person of tender years, brave beyond bounds yet exceedingly humble, has stood being a magnificent beacon of human rights. Malala Yousafzai is her name, of course.


This being the season for ceremonies, the august bodies who recognize special service to humankind are bestowing their honors. On Thursday, after winning the ecu Parliament's Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, 16-year-old Malala was the clear people%u2019s favorite to the Nobel Peace Prize too.

Early Friday morning, the committee in Oslo passed her over for The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. That was a blunder, considering how powerfully this young woman has forced humankind to reconsider the freedoms often denied her gender, especially in societies ruled by Islamist fundamentalism.

Malala is from Pakistan's Swat Valley, an idyllic spot, resembling Switzerland in look. She was a girl. She endured her family. She went to school. Then came the Taliban, with bans against permitting girls to master.