Reaching across gulfs of age, gender, faith, nationality and even international celebrity, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the 2014 peace prize yesterday to Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan and Kailash Satyarthi of India. The award joined a teenage Pakistani known around the world with an Indian veteran of campaigns to end child labour and free children from trafficking. Malala, 17, is the young
est recipient of the prize since it was created in 1901. Kailash is 60. The $1.1 million prize is to be divided equally between them. The award was announced in Oslo by Thorbjorn Jagland, the Nobel committee's chairman, who said: “The Nobel Committee regards it as an important point for a Hindu and a Muslim, an Indian and a Pakistani, to join in a common struggle for education and against extremism.” Malala, now 17, was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman two years ago in Pakistan after coming to prominence for her campaigning for education for girls. Advertisement She won for what the Nobel committee called her “heroic struggle” for girls' right to an education. She is the youngest ever winner of the prize. After being shot she was airlifted to Queen Elizabeth hospital in Birmingham, where she was treated for life-threatening injuries. She has since continued to campaign for girls' education, speaking before the UN, meeting Barack Obama, being named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people and last year publishing the memoir I am Malala. Last year, Malala won several European awards and published a memoir of her experiences, “I Am Malala.” The title echoed the circumstances of her shooting. When the Taliban gunman boarded her bus, he called out, “Who is Malala?” As she noted in an interview last year, her voice is now heard “in every corner of the world.” British news reports said Malala was at school in Birmingham, England, where she has lived since being treated for her gunshot wounds, when the prize was announced and was taken out of her class to be informed of the award. In many ways, her story has come to symbolize the trauma of modern Pakistan, as the nuclear-armed nation has struggled to reconcile the opposing forces of violent Islamism and those who envision a progressive, forward-facing future for their country. Last month, a gang of 10 Taliban fighters who tried to kill her were arrested, the Pakistan army claimed. Kailash Satyarthi, 60, despite his works, is not so widely known as Malala. In India, the former engineer has long been associated with the struggle to free bonded labourers, some born into their condition and others lured into servitude. Kailash, founder of Bachpan Bachao Andolan or the Save the Childhood Movement, has acted to protect the rights of 80,000 children. After the Nobel committee's announcement, he dedicated his prize to children in slavery, telling CNN-IBN: “It's an honour to all those children who are still suffering in slavery, bonded labour and trafficking.” “It's an honour to all my fellow Indians. I am thankful to all those who have been supporting my striving for more than the last 30 years,” he said. “A lot of credit goes to the Indians who fight to keep democracy so alive and so vibrant, where I was able to keep my fight on. “Something which was born in India has gone globally and now we have the global movement against child labour. After receiving this award I feel that people will give more attention to the cause of children in the world.” He emphasised that child labour “perpetuates poverty.” “Poverty must not be used as an excuse to continue child labour and exploitation of children,” he said. “It's a triangular relationship between child labour, poverty and illiteracy, and I have been trying to fight all of these things together.” The activist founded the Mukti Ashram, or Liberation Retreat, in the 1980s to teach bonded labourers, overwhelmingly children, new trades so they could participate freely in the Indian economy. He worked toward their release through Supreme Court orders and saved children forced to embroider textiles in a factory in New Delhi, weave carpets in Uttar Pradesh and toil on rice fields in Madhya Pradesh. His work was at times dangerous, and he was assaulted by circus owners when he freed Nepali children working in the Gonda district of Uttar Pradesh. He has spoken passionately on the issue of child rights and on the systemic forces, including the caste system, that contribute to bonded labour in India. “Caste, religion, the political system, the economic system — all are helping the bonded labour owners,” Kailash said in an interview with The New York Times in 1992. “I believe in Gandhi's philosophy of the last man, that is, the bonded labourer is the last man in Indian society, that we are here to liberate the last man.” In 1998, he organised the Global March against Child Labour across 103 countries, which helped to pave the way for an International Labour Organisation convention on the worst forms of child labour. Yemeni Nobel peace laureate Tawakkol Karman said Malala and Kailash were worthy winners and that Kailash had taken part in an “outstanding and long struggle for the rights of the child”. For the previous two years, the prize had been awarded to international bodies: the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in 2013 and the European Union in 2012. There were a record 278 nominations this year, 19 more than ever before -- including US whistleblowers Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and Pope Francis. Also on the list of nominees was an anti-war clause in the Japanese constitution and the International Space Station Partnership. Previous choices include illustrious names such as Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi, and Martin Luther King - and, controversially, Barack Obama in 2009. Worth 8m kronor each, the Nobel prizes are always handed out on December 10, the anniversary of prize founder Alfred Nobel's death in 1896. Besides the prize money, each laureate receives a diploma and a gold medal. Nobel, a wealthy Swedish industrialist who invented dynamite, provided few directions for how to select winners, except that the prize committees should reward those who “have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind”. [From New York Times & The Guardian]
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