Gulalai Ismail (; ) is a Pashtun human rights activist from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. She is the chairperson of Aware Girls, a global ambassador for Humanists International, and a leading member of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM). She speaks on the subject of promoting peace and women's empowerment at conferences internationally, and is the recipient of the International Humanist of the Year Award, the Chirac Prize for Conflict Prevention, and the Anna Politkovskaya Award. In 2019, Ismail fled Pakistan and took refuge in the United States after fearing for her life for speaking out against sexual assaults and disappearances allegedly carried out by the Pakistani military. In March 2021, she became a global ambassador for Humanists International. Early life and activism Ismail was born in Swabi and from the age of nine was brought up in Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The daughter of teacher and human rights activist Muhammad Ismail, she was educated from a young age about gender discrimination and women's rights. She graduated from Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad in 2012 with a Master of Philosophy degree in biotechnology. In 2002, when she was a 16-year-old first-year pre-medical student at Frontier College for Women, Peshawar, she founded the non-governmental organization Aware Girls with her 15-year-old sister Saba Ismail, aiming to challenge the culture of violence and the oppression of women in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Ismail aimed to bring peace activists together in order to discuss ways to promote peaceful resistance to the Pakistani Taliban and encourage more women into politics, and investigate the psychological impact of terrorism on children and families. Malala Yousafzai, the youngest Nobel Prize laureate, who was shot by the Pakistani Taliban at the age of 15 in 2012 because of her activism for female education, was an attendee of Aware Girls in 2011. In an interview in 2011, Ismail said: Ismail's organisation widened its scope to include education on topics such as access to HIV and AIDS prevention and treatment, access to safe abortions, and she continues to speak at international conferences to promote awareness of peace-building, tolerance and women's rights. Both Gulalai and her sister Saba Ismail have also acted as advisers on peace and women's rights to the United Nations and US governmental departments. In 2013, Ismail set up the Marastyal Helpline to give advice and assistance to women at risk from, and victims of, gender-based violence. The service gives advice on legal and medical