Meghan Markle and Prince Harry to join Malala Yousafzai for live stream chat to mark International Day of the Girl

The conversation will be available to watch through YouTube and the Malala Fund's social media channels.

Sarah Young
Thursday 08 October 2020 13:08 BST
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The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are joining forces with education campaigner Malala Yousafzai to celebrate this year’s International Day of the Girl.

Meghan and Harry will join the renowned 23-year-old activist for a video chat on Sunday 11 October, a spokesperson for the couple has confirmed.

The trio will discuss the barriers facing more than 130 million girls around the world who are not currently receiving an education, and what is being done to help them.

The conversation will be livestreamed through YouTube and the Malala Fund's social media channels.

Ms Yousafzai, who is international activist who campaigns for human rights, was targeted and shot by a Taliban gunman in 2012 at the age of 15, after campaigning for girls to be educated in her native Pakistan.

After surviving the assassination attempt, she moved to England and later founded the non-profit Malala Fund to support her work and went on to become the youngest-ever Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2014.

She also recently graduated from Oxford University, where she was studying philosophy, politics and economics.

Meghan has also been outspoken about her commitment to empowering young women and advocating for gender equality.

The former Suits star delivered a powerful speech at the UN Women Conference in 2015, where she recalled writing a letter at the age of 11, asking a soap manufacturer to change its sexist TV advert.

During her time as a working royal, she has regularly centred her work on women’s rights, including providing them with resources to obtain jobs through her patronage Smartworks.

Most recently, Meghan celebrated the work of young activists during a virtual speech for the Girls Up Leadership Summit, during which she spoke about the importance of women “building each other up.”

In August, the duchess referred to Harry as a feminist during a discussion with Gloria Steinem about the importance of voting in the upcoming US presidential election.

“As I’ve gotten older I’ve been able to understand that it’s not mutually exclusive to be a feminist and be feminine,” Meghan said. “And to own that and harness your femininity and your identification as a woman in all of the different layers.”

After Steinem pointed out that you can be “a feminist and be masculine and a guy,” the duchess referenced her husband as proof.

“Like my husband! I love that when he just came in he said: ‘You know that I’m a feminist too, right Gloria?! It’s really important to me that you know that,” Meghan recalled.

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