Calls for the young girl who won the heart of Birmingham’s residents during her stay in the city to win a Nobel Peace Prize have been dashed.
The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons won this year, despite a major push for Malala Yousafzai, who was treated in the city after being shot by the Taliban in Pakistan.
However, the 16-year-old revealed she has bigger plans – after unveiling she wants to be Prime Minister in her homeland.
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She said: “I think it’s really good because through politics I can serve my whole country, become doctor of the whole country, help children get education, help them go to school, improve the quality of education,” she said amid a thunderous applause from the audience of over 200 people, including young children.”
The Norwegian Nobel Committee honoured the global chemical watchdog based in The Hague, Netherlands “for its extensive efforts to eliminate chemical weapons”.
The snub led to disappointment on social media outlets, with the term “Malala” being Tweeted thousands of times internationally today.
The Pakistani Taliban was, however, “delighted” Malala did not win Nobel.
It said in a statement: “She did nothing big so it’s good that she didn’t get it.”
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The peace prize was the last of the original Nobel Prizes to be announced for this year. The winners of the economics award, added in 1968, will be announced on Monday.
The OPCW was formed in 1997 to enforce the Chemical Weapons Convention, the first international treaty to outlaw an entire class of weapons.
The organisation has 189 member states and Friday’s award comes just days before Syria officially joins and even as OPCW inspectors are on a highly risky United Nations-backed disarmament mission based in Damascus to verify and destroy President Bashar Assad’s arsenal of poison gas and nerve agents amid a raging civil war.
“The conventions and the work of the OPCW have defined the use of chemical weapons as a taboo under international law,” the committee said.
“Recent events in Syria, where chemical weapons have again been put to use, have underlined the need to enhance the efforts to do away with such weapons.”