Malala receives highest U.N. honour to promote girls education

File photo: Pakistani Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai and her father Ziauddin Yousafzai in a classroom in Paysannat School near Mahama refugee camp, Rwanda, July 14, 2016. REUTERS/Katy Migiro

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appointed Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai a U.N. Messenger of Peace on Monday to promote girls education, more than four years after a Taliban gunman shot her in the head on her school bus in 2012.

At 19, Yousafzai is the youngest Messenger of Peace, the highest honour given by the United Nations for an initial period of two years. She was also the youngest person to win the Nobel peace prize in 2014 when she was 17.