Fatima Zaman wins top UK’s Asian Women of Achievement Award

One Young World Ambassador Fatima Zaman has been tipped as a future Nobel Laureate after being named the overall winner at the UK’s Asian Women of Achievement Awards.

Judges at the prestigious ceremony said that Zaman, 25, an activist who promotes education as a means of tackling extremist violence, had the talent to “change the world”. 

The London-based campaigner, who helped set up a website called ‘Educate Against Hate’ to provide teaching tools for anti-radicalisation classes and workshops, was a speaker at One Young World’s 2016 Summit in Ottawa, where she addressed a plenary session on Peace & Security. 

In their citation, the judges at the Asian Women of Achievement Awards described Zaman’s approach as “internationally groundbreaking” and said she had shown “enormous resilience” in pursuing her cause “despite threats”. They said: “The judges believe Fatima could be a future Nobel Prize winner.”

Zaman was moved to take action against radicalisation after witnessing the London terror attacks in July 2005. She is a young leader for the Extremely Together initiative which was founded by One Young World and the Kofi Annan Foundation to enhance the role of young people in tackling extremist violence.

She has also worked with the UK Government’s Department for Education and advised ministers on tackling radicalisation in schools.

Zaman describes herself as “a highly-motivated, disciplined and target-driven individual with a passion for the politics of the Middle East”. Her approach, she says, is to use “credible counter narratives to dispel, destroy and drown out extremist propaganda”. She aims to equip young people with “the critical thinking skills and religious literacy to have conversations and discern between extremist narratives both online and offline”.

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