Malala Yousafzai (Pashto: , Pashto pronunciation: [mlal jusf zj]; Urdu: ; born 12 July 1997), often referred to mononymously as Malala, is a Pakistani female education activist and the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Awarded when she was 17, she is the world's youngest Nobel Prize laureate, and the second Pakistani and the first Pashtun to ever receive a Nobel Prize. She is known for human rights advocacy, especially the education of women and children in her native Swat, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where the Pakistani Taliban have at times banned girls from attending school. Her advocacy has grown into an international movement, and according to former Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, she has become Pakistan's "most prominent citizen."The daughter of education activist Ziauddin Yousafzai, she was born to a Yusufzai Pashtun family in Swat, and named after the Afghan national heroine, Malalai of Maiwand. Considering Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Barack Obama, and Benazir Bhutto as her role models, she was particularly inspired by her father's thoughts and humanitarian work. In early 2009, when she was 11, she wrote a blog under her pseudonym Gul Makai for the BBC Urdu to detail her life during the Taliban's occupation of Swat. The following summer, journalist Adam B. Ellick made a New York Times documentary about her life as the Pakistan Armed Forces launched Operation Rah-e-Rast against the militants in Swat. She rose in prominence, giving interviews in print and on television, and was nominated for the International Children's Peace Prize by activist Desmond Tutu.

On 9 October 2012, while on a bus in Swat District after taking an exam, Yousafzai and two other girls were shot by a Taliban gunman in an assassination attempt in retaliation for her activism; the gunman fled the scene. Yousafzai was hit in the head with a bullet and remained unconscious and in critical condition at the Rawalpindi Institute of Cardiology, but her condition later improved enough for her to be transferred to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, UK. The attempt on her life sparked an international outpouring of support for her. Deutsche Welle reported in January 2013 that she may have become "the most famous teenager in the world". Weeks after the attempted murder, a group of 50 leading Muslim clerics in Pakistan issued a fatw against those who tried to kill her. The Pakistani Taliban were internationally denounced by governments, human rights organizations and feminist groups. The Pakistani Taliban officials responded to condemnation by further denouncing Yousafzai, indicating plans for a possible second assassination attempt, which they felt was justified as a religious obligation. Their statements resulted in further international condemnation.After her recovery, Yousafzai became a prominent activist for the right to education. Based in Birmingham, she co-founded the Malala Fund, a non-profit organisation, with Shiza Shahid. In 2013, she co-authored I Am Malala, an international best seller. In 2012, she received Pakistan's first National Youth Peace Prize and the 2013 Sakharov Prize. In 2014, she was the co-recipient of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize, with Kailash Satyarthi of India. Aged 17 at the time, she was the youngest-ever Nobel Prize laureate. In 2015, she was the subject of the Oscar-shortlisted documentary He Named Me Malala. The 2013, 2014 and 2015 issues of Time magazine featured her as one of the most influential people globally. In 2017 she was awarded honorary Canadian citizenship and became the youngest person to address the House of Commons of Canada.Yousafzai completed her secondary school education at Edgbaston High School, Birmingham in England from 2013 to 2017. From there she won a place at Oxford University and undertook three years of study for a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE), as an undergraduate at Lady Margaret Hall, a college of the university. She graduated in 2020.

The Taliban (; Pashto: طالبان, romanized: ṭālibān, lit. 'students' or 'seekers'), which also refers to itself by the name of its state, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a Deobandi-Pashtun Islamic fundamentalist, militant Islamist, and jihadist political movement in Afghanistan. It ruled approximately three-quarters of the country from 1996–2001, before being overthrown following the United States invasion. It regained power in August 2021 after years of insurgency.

The Taliban emerged in 1994 as one of the prominent factions in the Afghan Civil War and largely consisted of students (ṭālib) from the Pashtun areas of eastern and southern Afghanistan who had been educated in traditional Islamic schools (madāris). Under the leadership of Mohammed Omar, the movement spread throughout most of Afghanistan, shifting power away from the Mujahideen warlords. In 1996, the group administered roughly three-quarters of the country, and established the First Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, with the Afghan capital transferred to Kandahar from Kabul. The Taliban's government was opposed by the Northern Alliance militia, which seized parts of northeast Afghanistan and largely maintained international recognition as a continuation of the interim Islamic State of Afghanistan. The Taliban held control of most of the country until being overthrown after the United States invasion of Afghanistan in December 2001.

After being overthrown, the Taliban launched an insurgency to fight the United States-backed Karzai administration and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in the War in Afghanistan. Under Hìbatullah Akhundzada's leadership, in May 2021, the Taliban began a military offensive, in which the group seized control of several areas from the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Following the Fall of Kabul on 15 August 2021, the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan and established the Islamic Emirate once again.

During their rule from 1996 to 2001, the Taliban enforced a strict interpretation of Sharia, or Islamic law, and were widely condemned for massacres against Afghan civilians, harsh discrimination against religious and ethnic minorities, denial of UN food supplies to starving civilians, destruction of cultural monuments, banning of females from school and most employment, and prohibition of most music. Following their return to power in 2021, the Afghanistan government budget has lost 80% of its funding, food insecurity is widespread and Taliban leaders have talked of a "softer" enforcement of sharia, and urged the United States and other countries to recognize its regime.