The world has watched as Malala Yousafzai, 15, fights for her life after being shot in the head and neck by gunmen on October 9th in Mingora, Pakistan. Tehrik-e-Taliban proudly claimed responsibility for the horrific attack and Malala now struggles to survive after being airlifted to receive advanced medical treatment at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, United Kingdom. Malala started blogging for the Urdu-language website of the BBC at age 11 under the name “Gul Makai,” which means Cornflower in Pashto and is the name of a heroine in local folkore. Malala’s diary entries centered around life under the Taliban as a young school girl in the Swat region of Pakistan, a country with the lowest youth literacy in the world, where 25 million children are out of school. She wrote about hiding her schoolbooks under her shawl, avoiding colorful clothing to avert angering the Taliban, and walking past the beheaded bodies of people who had defied the fundamentalists. In the three years since she started writing about the educational challenges of girls in Swat, Malala has won Pakistan’s first National Youth Peace Prize, was nominated for the International Children’s Peace Prize by Desmond Tutu, and became chairperson of the District Child Assembly in Swat. The daughter of a schoolmaster, Malala was always encouraged to speak out and at a young age she realized that terrorism in her local community could not solved only through military action – she believed education was essential. “If the new generation is not given pens, they will be given guns by the terrorists,” she said. Newsweek presents a photo essay of people around the world who mourn the attack on Malala and hope for her recovery.