Malala Yousafzai amplifies voices of refugee girls in new book, "We Are Displaced"
Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai has a new book highlighting the stories of young women impacted by global immigration policies. In "We Are Displaced: My Journey and Stories From Refugee Girls Around the World," she not only tells her own story of displacement after being shot and nearly killed by the Taliban in her home country of Pakistan, but also the stories of other displaced women she's met.
"Oftentimes when we hear about refugees we hear about them in figures and numbers. We hear about them, but we never hear from them. We never hear what they want to say, what their dreams are, their aspirations are," Yousafzai said Monday on "CBS This Morning."
The Oxford University student said she hopes people will learn more about refugees by hearing from them.
"For most of these girls, most of these women and children around the world who are going through conflicts right now, going through wars right now, their last choice is to become refugees, but that's often the only choice to survive," Yousafzai said. "And they want, you know, to live in a peaceful place. They want to have a home. They want to have a future for their children. And that's often the things that we don't hear. And I think that's something that I want people to understand and that I want to deliver to this world."
The stories include those of Marie Claire, a refugee who escaped violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zambia before moving to Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She also writes about Analisa, who fled Guatemala and made the dangerous journey across the U.S.-Mexico border to Massachusetts in search of a better life.
Asked about President Trump's fight for $5 billion funding for a U.S.-Mexico border wall, Yousafzai said, "This does not reflect the values of America."
"I hope that the president and also other political leaders in the U.S. they will reflect what American people believe, which is welcoming and which is supporting refugees. And I hope that the president and other people read the book and learn more about refugees. And I also hope that they visit a refugee camp and actually meet refugee people and hear their stories," she said.