The world knows him as Malala's father. He's now teamed up with a Utah-based nonprofit

Yahoo

02-05-2025

Raucous applause welcomed Ziauddin Yousafzai as he walked up to the podium in the Siempre in Draper, Utah, on Tuesday.
Though he's an educator and New York Times bestselling author, Yousafzai acknowledged that he is best-known for his daughter, Malala, who is an advocate for girls' education and the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner.
'The world knows me as Malala's father. First, she was my daughter, but now I'm her father, and I'm so proud of this introduction — being known as father in patriarchal society,' he said.
Yousafzai was the keynote speaker at the 2025 Bellwether International Annual Fundraising Gala, and he helped the organization highlight reasons for hope in a violent world.
Bellwether International is a nonprofit focused on creating genocide-resistant societies and disrupting the genocide cycle. Its executive director, Rachel Miner, founded the organization while she was an undergraduate at Brigham Young University.
Miner told the gala's attendees that Bellwether International's research shows, on average, genocides occur every two and a half years and that they're a premeditated act.
'Genocide is always premeditated. It's always planned. That's really morbid and gruesome, but it's also why we have hope. If it's planned, it's preventable. If it's premeditated, it's preventable,' Miner said Tuesday.
Per its five-year report, Bellwether hopes 'to create a world where governments can prevent genocide (top-down), and individuals resist genocide (bottom-up) to create peaceful and plural societies.'
It does that through its Bellwether Method, which consists of providing trauma healing to genocide survivors through cognitive behavioral therapy, implementing economic empowerment initiatives and advocating for religious tolerance by working with governments.
Yousafzai first became acquainted with Miner and Bellwether at an interfaith and genocide art competition.
His nonprofit, the Malala Fund, which he founded with his daughter in 2013, has since partnered with Bellwether International.
'Rachel is spiritually qualified to do this job,' Yousafzai said. 'This woman's heart is full of love for humanity.'
Another longtime Bellwether friend also spoke at the gala: MP Brendan O'Hara from the UK Parliament, who is also a human rights spokesperson for the Scottish National Party.
O'Hara recounted his first trip with Miner to Warsaw, Poland, which took place just weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine. He described running through department stores and children's clothing stores with Miner, attempting to buy 300 pairs of children's underwear for Ukrainian refugee children.
'In crisis, people show who they are, and in that crisis, I saw the Bellwether way,' he said.
During his remarks on Tuesday, Yousafzai gave the backstory of Malala, who has taken after her namesake, folk heroine Malalai of Maiwand.
Malalai of Maiwand was a teenage girl who rallied fighters during the Second Anglo-Afghan War. Before becoming a father, Yousafzai saw a portrait of Malalai in a friend's home.
The fact that Malalai of Maiwand had her own identity and voice stood out to Yousafzai. He thought to himself that if he was a father in the coming years, he would name his daughter after Malalai.
'I had this girl in my mind that she'd be known by her own name and she'd have her voice,' he said.
Malala has gone on to raise her voice and advocate for the right to education — and she nearly lost her life for that cause.
Malala became an education activist as a child after the Taliban took over Swat Valley, where the Yousafzai family lived, and prohibited girls from attending school. In 2012, when she was just 15 years old, Malala was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman.
She was able to recover and continue her work. In just the past three years, the Malala Fund raised $65 million that's been invested in countries 'where the number of out of school girls is the highest,' Ziauddin Yousafzai said, such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Nigeria.
According to him, Pakistan has six million girls out of secondary school. Nigeria has five million out of school, Ethiopia has two million and Brazil has 600,000.
By speaking out, Malala went from being a voice for 50,000 girls to now 122 million out of school girls, her father said.
'When your rights are violated, you should be the first person to speak up,' Yousafzai said.
Before concluding his remarks, Yousafzai posed a question to the audience.
'Do you want to be poor with rich values or rich with poor values? I will go for the first one,' he said.
Bellwether International has three trips planned in the coming months to Bosnia, Cambodia and Cape Town, South Africa, as it continues its mission to prevent genocide.