JOIN USAn online campaign has been launched in the US asking leaders, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to nominate Pakistani teenage rights activist Malala Yousafzai for the Nobel Peace Prize, with 11,000 people supporting the cause in just three days.
First launched in Canada, some 115,000 people have joined similar campaigns in France, Germany, Britain, Italy, Spain and India.
Malala, 15, was shot in the head by the Taliban for running a girls’ education campaign in the Swat Valley of Pakistan against their wishes.
At present, she is undergoing treatment at a British hospital. Nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize close on February 2013.
“As an educator and board member of a non-profit building schools in South Sudan, it is an honour to petition Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to nominate Malala Yousafzai for the Nobel Peace Prize,” Bonnie Lloyd, an adjunct professor of Sociology at the Rochester Institute of Technology, said.
Lloyd is leading the campaign on Change.org after being inspired by Malala’s courage in standing up for girls in the face of Taliban violence and by the subsequent global outpouring of support for the young activist.