Malala Yousafzai calls for leaders in India, Pakistan to de-escalate tensions

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai urged leaders in India and her native Pakistan to cool tensions between the two teetering on the brink of military conflict.

"Hatred and violence are our common enemies, not each other," Yousafzai, a Pakistani education and human rights advocate, said Wednesday in a post on the social platform X. "The international community must act now to promote dialogue and diplomacy."

"Peace is the only way forward for our collective security and prosperity," she added.

Yousafzai rose to prominence in 2014 when she became the youngest Nobel Prize recipient in history at just 17 years old and was recognized for her work advocating for the education of women and children in defiance of Taliban efforts to ban girls from attending school.

On Wednesday, she called for both nuclear-armed countries to "unite against the forces of division."

The request came just hours after India launched missile strikes in Pakistani territory on Wednesday and Pakistan said it shot down five Indian Air Force jets in return — an escalation of simmering tensions between the countries that bubbled over with an attack that killed more than two dozen tourists in India-controlled Kashmir last month.

Pakistan's military officials said India's retaliatory strikes killed 31 people, including women and children, and called the attack "an act of war," but officials in India argued that they targeted terror camps.

The international community has called for restraint from both sides.

Speaking to Britian's Sky News on Wednesday, Yousafzia noted that she also has been the victim of extremism in Pakistan but argued that further aggression won't solve the problem.

"I think we have to talk about the root cause of it — we have to talk about how it comes about," she said. "Because I believe that nobody is born a terrorist, nobody is born an extremist. These things are taught. This is part of an indoctrination."

The laureate said she worries for the civilians, especially children, in both countries.

"Our common enemy is extremism, terrorism and violence — not each other," Yousafzia, who has also spoken out against the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, added. "We have to unite against these forces that try to divide us."