The 25 Most Influential Teens of 2014

Teens today might have a mixed reputation, but there’s no denying their influence. They command millions of fans on Twitter and Vine,start companies with funds they raised on Kickstarter, steal sceneson TV’s most popular shows, lead protests with global ramifications, and even—as of Friday—win Nobel Peace Prizes. But which ones rise above the rest? We analyzed social-media followings, cultural accolades, business acumen and more to determine this year’s list (ordered from youngest to oldest)

• Mo’ne Davis, 13

  It’s not every day that a black female athlete appears on the cover of Sports Illustrated—let alone one who’s 13. So Mo’ne Davis made quite a splash in August when she landed that spot (cover line: “Remember Her Name”) after pitching a shutout game in the Little League World Series. Her team, Philadelphia’s Taney Dragons, was eventually knocked out of the tournament, but not before Davis got accolades from Michelle Obama, Kevin Durant and Ellen DeGeneres, among others. Many hope she will be a role model for girls in sports, especially those that are typically male-dominated. —Sarah Begle

• Sasha Obama, 13, and Malia Obama, 16

  

  Pablo Martinez Monsivais—AP

  A lot of dads get squeamish about their daughter’s first prom, but only Malia Obama’s date status could be called “classified information,” as the President joked on Live! with Kelly and Michael last spring. Nonetheless, she has emerged as a figure of national interest: her appearance at Chicago’s Lollapalooza Music Festival caused almost as much of a stiras the musicians themselves, and her name has spiked in popularity after her father’s election. (It’s predicted to peak again in 2018.) Sasha, meanwhile, has become an icon in her own right: after being photographed in a unicorn sweatshirt, the style sold out at ASOS in a matter of days. —S.B.

Pakistan nabs militants linked to attack on Malala

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistan’s army said Friday that it has arrested 10 militants suspected of involvement in the 2012 attack on teenage activist Malala Yousafzai, who won world acclaim after she was shot in the head by the Taliban for advocating gender equality and education for women.

Army spokesman Gen. Asim Saleem Bajwa said the detained men attacked Yousafzai, then 15, on orders from Mullah Fazlullah, the head of the Pakistani Taliban. The army is currently waging a major offensive against the extremist group in North Waziristan, a tribal region along the border with Afghanistan that has long been a militant stronghold.

Malala Marches Toward the Nobel Peace Prize

Complement video:

By Aryn Baker

Malala Yousafzai said: ‘I hope this book will reach people around the world, so they realise how difficult it is for some children to get access to education.’ Photograph: Liz Cave/Getty

This Friday, the Nobel committee announces the 2013 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. As far as global opinion is concerned, the award is a 16-year-old Pakistani girl’s to lose.

Long before she became a global symbol of children’s education, Malala Yousufzai was one girl squirming under the thumb of the Pakistani Taliban, whose draconian interpretation of Islamic law saw girls’ schools closed in her hometown of Mingora in early 2009. In a frank and witty blog published on the BBC Urdu  website under a pseudonym, Malala, then 11-years-old, chafed at the new regulations that limited her freedom, stopped her from learning and kept her from seeing her friends. The pseudonym, of course, was meant to protect her identity, but it was not long before her private persona—the outspoken daughter of a prominent school administrator—meshed with her public one, and she took her demand that a girls’ right to education be recognized across Pakistan to a national audience, appearing several times on TV talk shows and eventually in an international documentary. “I wanted to speak up for my rights,” she told the BBC on Monday, when reminiscing about her early activism. “And also I didn’t want my future to be just sitting in a room and be imprisoned in my four walls and just cooking and giving birth to children. I didn’t want to see my life in that way.”

Malala Wins International Children’s Peace Prize

AMSTERDAM — Pakistani teenager Malala Yousafzai, an outspoken proponent of girls’ education who survived a Taliban assassination attempt last year, has been awarded a top Dutch children’s honor for her activism.

Organizers announced Tuesday that 16-year-old Malala will be presented with the International Children’s Peace Prize next month in The Hague, Netherlands.

The foundation that awards the prize hailed Malala as “a brave and talented child who has demonstrated special dedication to children’s rights.”

The bravest girl Malala’s 16th birthday (Videos)

Update:

Malala speech in the UN

Hello there,

Today is Malala’s 16th birthday.

Soon she’ll take to the UN floor with more than 3,500,000 of our voices behind her and tell the world about her fight for education for every girl and boy in the world. The support for her campaign has been overwhelming, and we’ve got much more to do,  but now is our time to celebrate.

It’s been a long road, but today the bravest girl we know will spend her birthday fighting for others. So let’s show her how important her strength and courage are to all of us.

Malala Yousafzai up for Nobel Peace Prize

Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousufzai has been nominated for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.

Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani schoolgirl who was shot for promoting girls’ education, has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize this year.

The 15-year-old was shot by a Taliban gunman at point blank range as she travelled on a bus to school on October 9, targeted for promoting girls’ education.

She has since become an internationally recognised symbol of opposition to the Taliban’s drive to deny women education, and against religious extremism in a country where women’s rights are often flouted.

“A prize to Malala would not only be timely and fitting with a line of awards to champions of human rights and democracy, but also … would set both children and education on the peace and conflict agenda,” said Kristian Berg Harpviken, head of the Peace Research Institute of Oslo.

Others known to have been nominated are human rights activists whose names have been mentioned in previous years, including Belarussian human rights activist Ales Belyatski – currently behind bars – and Russia’s Lyudmila Alexeyeva.

Belarus, which former US President George W. Bush’s administration had branded as the “the last dictatorship in Europe”, is governed by authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko, who has cracked down even further on opponents of late, rights groups charge.

Runner-Up: Malala Yousafzai, the Fighter

By Aryn Baker / Mingora

Ayesha Mir didn’t go to school on Tuesday, Nov. 27, the day after a security guard found a shrapnel-packed bomb under her family’s car. The 17-year-old Pakistani girl assumed, as did most people who learned about the bomb, that it was intended for her father, the television news presenter Hamid Mir, who often takes on the Taliban in his nightly news broadcasts. Traumatized by the near miss, Ayesha spent most of the day curled up in a corner of her couch, unsure whom to be angrier with: the would-be assassins or her father for putting himself in danger. She desperately wanted someone to help her make sense of things.

At around 10:30 p.m., she got her wish. Ayesha’s father had just come home from work, and he handed her his BlackBerry. “She wants to speak to you,” he said. The voice on the phone was weak and cracked, but it still carried the confidence that Ayesha and millions of other Pakistanis had come to know through several high-profile speeches and TV appearances.

The Practice of Child Brides

Gordon Brown, Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; UN Special Envoy for Global Education

After the tragic news this week of 16-year-old Shiwa Hasmi of Bardiya district in Nepal, I am asking governments and the UN to enforce laws against child marriage and in favour of universal education for girls. Shiwa died in hospital after being set on fire following her refusal to be forced into a child marriage against her will.

Inspired by Malala, We Must Make School Accessible to the World’s Children

By Gordon Brown,  Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; UN Special Envoy for Global Education

When Malala Yousafzai was targeted and shot by the Taliban in Pakistan on October 9th, simply for wanting to go to school, the whole world of education was changed forever.

Globally, 32 million girls do not yet go to primary school and since October 9th, thousands of children have demonstrated, signed petitions and registered their demand that Malala and girls like her should be able to go to school free of fear and intimidation.

Elsewhere in South Asia, children have started to assert their rights to schooling. In Bangladesh, a new movement led by girls and boys is demanding an end to child marriage. In district after district ‘child marriage free zones’ are being declared as children themselves assert their right not to be sold into loveless marriages they did not choose.

In India this weekend a 300 kilometer march of children started from Assam province, calling for a ban on child labor. Led by 100 child laborers rescued from trafficking, they will demand their right to be at school.

So long as there are children denied the chance of school, Malala will be the standard bearer for their rights. Now and for every day until all young children have the chance to go to school, ‘I am Malala’ will be the banner under which millions of girls throughout the world will demand their right to education.

The Delhi 14

By Gordon Brown, Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; UN Special Envoy for Global Education

Just 72 hours ago in the Indian capital of Delhi 14 children were freed from slave labour. They were being held in dark, insanitary conditions and forced to work for up to 15 hours a day making Christmas decorations. Two were just eight years old.

The suffering of these young children, cruelly trafficked into slave labour, is the real Christmas story of 2012. Their plight must become a wake-up call for all concerned about the treatment of vulnerable children around the world. It demands we move immediately to ban all child labor.

The children rescued in Delhi had been beaten and intimidated. Imprisoned in dingy, locked rooms where they were forced to make Christmas goods with no access to light or fresh air. Malnourished and underfed, many had injuries as a result of using glass to make trinkets and because of violent assaults by their gangmasters. All had been sold into slavery and trafficked by middlemen.

The Christmas decorations and seasonal gifts they were making were for export from India to the West. There are near identical items on sale in shops in America and Europe right now.

The courageous morning break-in that freed the children from this slave labor was organized and carried out by Kailash Satyarthi and his co-leaders of Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA) and Global March Against Child Labour (GMACL). They faced violent resistance by the gangmasters and thugs.

Because the gangmasters had received a tip off that a raid would take place, most of the children had been whisked away from the workshop and 12 were incarcerated in a pitch-black cell no bigger than 6ft by 6ft

Malala Yousafzai should win Nobel Peace Prize, petition says MaLA

Malala speech:

More than 90,000 people have already signed an online petition calling for Malala Yousafzai to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

At Change.org, Canadian journalist Tarek Fatah said no person deserves the award more than the 15-year-old Pakistani girl who survived an assassination attempt.

A Unified Global Moment to Honor Malala Yousafzai

By Gordon Brown,  Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; UN Special Envoy for Global Education

On November 10th we will celebrate ‘Malala Day,’ the moment the whole world honors the sacrifice of Malala Yousafzai, the young girl shot by the Taliban simply for trying to go to school.

Fortunately, Malala is starting on the road to recovery and Malala Day, one month after Malala was left for dead by Taliban assassins, is an opportunity for people everywhere to come together to support the cause that Malala so valiantly represents: a girl’s right to education.

The right to education is denied to 61 million children of primary school age around the world. Girls, boys, the marginalized, rural children, child laborers — the hopes of these 61 million are represented by the struggle and voice of Malala. November 10th is our opportunity to continue to speak out in support of Malala’s vision of every child in school, learning and reaching their full potential.

This Saturday, on Malala Day, new initiatives will be announced in support of Malala and in support of the cause she has risked her life for.

The Malala Yousafzai Children’s Education Institute, named in honor of Malala, will be announced to help educate the world on the need for universal education. The Malala Institute, supported by the Good Planet Foundation, will publish research reports leading the fight for education for every child still denied the right to school.

NGOs such as Plan International are already stepping up their efforts to educate girls. I have also been approached by dedicated teachers and philanthropists wishing to start Malala schools.

While the final figures will not be announced until Saturday, already some one million people have signed petitions urging Pakistan to ensure every girl has a place at school and calling for the United Nations to continue the advance of universal education.

It’s Up to Us to Deliver for Malala

By Gordon Brown, Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; UN Special Envoy for Global Education

Today 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai, shot in the head by the Taliban for wanting to go to school, will arrive in the UK for medical treatment.

Medical experts say that Malala, fortunate to escape death from the assassin’s bullet, faces a long haul to recovery. I know the Birmingham hospital where Malala is to be treated. I have visited patients, doctors and nurses there on a number of occasions and I have seen at first hand their expertise in dealing with injuries caused by gunshot wounds.

I have also spoken this morning to Pakistan’s High Commissioner in the UK, who is travelling to meet Malala when she arrives in Birmingham. I have assured him of whatever help is needed for Malala and her family.

As Malala fights for her life, a worldwide campaign continues to grow around her in support of her demand for education for every girl.

In Pakistan, as well as India, Bangladesh and Afghanistan and along with the West, Malala’s courage is inspiring revulsion against the Taliban. She is becoming for millions of children their adopted sister and for millions of parents their adopted daughter.

This week leaders and celebrities are now joining the thousands of young supporters in signing the new ‘I am Malala’ petition on: www.educationenvoy.org.

The petition will be presented to the Pakistani President and the UN Secretary-General, demanding that Malala and every girl, is granted their right to education.

If leaders are now offering welcome support, it is children and young people who have led the waves of protest — and by demonstrating in droves, this new generation has done more to assert the right of every child to education than the leaders who promised to deliver it.

Behind the headlines, the protests are giving birth to a campaign of young people who are no longer willing to tolerate the gap between the promise of opportunity for all and the reality of millions of boys and girls shut out from even the most basic of primary schooling.