United Nations: Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai has made an appeal to leaders to do more on Syria, stating the drowning toddler portrayed how the world has “lost humanity”. She said she was so upset with the extremists hurling abuses on girls in Syria and Iraq that she stopped watching the news.
Malala said she saw and has remained haunted by the picture of Aylan Kurdi, the Syrian toddler whose body washed up on a Turkish beach in an image that has become symbolic of the risk the refugees are taking to seek safety in Europe. “We lost humanity on that day when... nowhere a child is welcome,” she told reporters at the United Nations. “It is important that people open their hearts and people open their lands to people who are now needing more support and who need the right to live,” she said. The 18 year old who was shot at by the Taliban for pursuing school, appealed to the world leaders to imagine their own children suffering the abuses meted out by the Islamic State movement which has sexually enslaved girls from minority groups. “The first thing is that the world leaders need to take all these issues more seriously. They should think about their own children.”
The youngest-ever Nobel Peace Prize winner never returned to Pakistan for three years amid concerns for her safety and chose to study in Birmingham, England. She had come to New York for the adoption of a new UN development agenda, which aims to end extreme poverty in 15 years. She said she took two days off. “I never miss a school day unless it's for a good cause and it really brings change,” she said.
