Can Malala Yousafzai win the Nobel Prize 2013?

This girl, aged just 16, has done more to change the prospects of women around the world than any other person in recent history. She has put Education and Empowerment of girls and women more firmly on the agenda like no other international personality has managed to do. Gordon Brown, Hillary Clinton, Bill Gates, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and others besides have all spoken. But when Malala stood up to speak, the world fell silent in awe. She has spoken up with the purity and honesty of a child and with ear-splitting clarity because of the vicious treatment that she has had to endure. Here but for the grace of God, she did not get silenced like many of her compatriots did when they spoke up for common sense. Singled out for her outspoken demands for the right of girls to go to school in her native Afghanistan, she was targeted by the Taliban and attacked in her minibus on the way to school. Shot in the head and left for dead, they didn’t manage to silence her.

I hope that Malala receives the Nobel Prize for Peace for 2013. If ever there was a candidate who deserved it, then it was Malala.