AT first glance it seemed a casual school reunion: three girls, hugging and kissing.

But this was no normal meeting. Malala Yousafzai, the Nobel Peace Prize nominee and global heroine, was before the world's press in Edinburgh, meeting both friends for the first time together after all three were gunned down in Pakistan by the Taliban for daring to stand up for the right of young girls to get an education.

Yesterday, the "most courageous teenager in the world" was in Edinburgh to help the Carnegie UK Trust launch a Global Citizenship Commission tasked with investigating how the UN's 1948 Declaration of Human Rights should be updated for the 21st century.

Sixteen-year-old Malala, who on Friday met the Queen in London, was guest of honour and received a £10,000 donation to help fund her future studies and charitable work. She was awarded a rare honorary Masters degree by Edinburgh University's principal, Timothy O'Shea, and distinguished "old boy" Gordon Brown, the former prime minister.

First, however, there was the reunion with Shazia Ramzan and Kainat Riaz, two friends who sat beside her on the fateful day last October and who have also left Pakistan to study in the UK. Following a standing ovation on her arrival from an invited 1000-strong audience, the meeting was held on the stage of Edinburgh University's McEwan Hall, where the inaugural meeting of the Commission was taking place.

Commission chairman Brown said: "A year ago Malala was lying in a hospital bed in Pakistan before being brought to Britain and being treated by some wonderful doctors.

"She is now seen around the world as a symbol of courage, bravery and resilience who has made great sacrifices to the cause of education of girls around the world.

"She has proved that threats, violence and intimidation will not silence her voice or that of the two friends, Shazia and Kainat, who were also injured in the shooting. This is the first time they have been reunited in the UK."

During a question and answer session with Brown, Malala was asked why, after being attacked, she was continuing to campaign for better education for children around the world, and about her own hopes for the future.

Answering with the aplomb of a diplomat, she said: "After I was shot by the terrorist and my friends were injured we had to show that we were not afraid. People around the world have given their support and that has given us courage."

What she and her friends wanted was for all girls to have the right to education. "In my society it is boys who go to school and get degrees and jobs," she said. "The other half of the population is deprived of education; their job is to look after the home and family. I want every girl to have the right to go to school. That is what will empower them."

She said that, through the Malala Fund, she hopes to work towards persuading governments to switch spending from military purposes to education. "Pakistan has a big military budget - so do all the superpowers," she said. "If that money was spent on pens, books and teachers instead of armies then there would be less war.

"I want to persuade governments to make education their priority and big companies to make the donations that will help make this possible."

Malala's ambition is to complete her GCSEs in her new hometown of Birmingham - "with straight As!" - before going to university. She added she once wanted to be a doctor but now wanted to be a politician, bringing an audible groan from Brown.

"I want to be in parliament shouting about these issues but also on the outside taking action," she said.

The Global Citizenship Commission - members include Burmese human rights leader Aung San Suu Kyi, as well as a range of other prominent philosophers, legal experts and civic leaders - is being financed by the Carnegie Trust, named after the Scots-American philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie.

Brown, the UN special envoy on education, said: "There are human rights that were not recognised in 1948 that need to be acknowledged. Then we need to move on from that to implementing them uniformly in an inter-dependent world."