Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi Are Awarded Nobel Peace Prize
Ms. Yousafzai, 17, is the youngest recipient of the $1.1 million prize since it was created in 1901. Mr. Satyarthi is 60.
“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.”
Renowned child rights activist Kailash Satyarthi and Pakistan's Malala Yousafzai were on Friday declared the joint winners of the Nobel Peace 2014....
Kailash Satyarthi (born 11 January 1954) is an Indian children's rights activist and is a Nobel Peace Prize winner this year.
He has been active in the Indian movement against child labour since the 1990s.
So far his organization, Bachpan Bachao Andolan, has freed over 80,000 children from various forms of servitude and helped in successful re-integration, rehabilitation and education.
Satyarthi campaigned worldwide on social issues involving children.
He has been involved with the Global March Against Child Labor and its international advocacy body, the International Center on Child Labor and Education (ICCLE), which are worldwide coalitions of NGOs, teachers and trades unionists, and also the Global Campaign for Education.
In addition, he established Rugmark (now known as Goodweave) as the first voluntary labelling, monitoring and certification system of rugs manufactured without the use of child-labour in South Asia.
This latter organisation operated a campaign in Europe and the USA in the late 1980s and early 1990s with the intent of raising consumer awareness of the issues relating to the accountability of global corporations with regard to socially responsible consumerism and trade.
The impact and success of this initiative created a ripple effect across global production and supply chains.
Satyarthi has highlighted child labor as a human rights issue as well as a welfare matter and charitable cause.
He has argued that it perpetuates poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, population growth and other social problems, and his claims have been supported by several studies.
He has also had a role in linking the movement against child labor with efforts for achieving "Education for All".
He has been a member of a UNESCO body established to examine this and has been on the board of the Fast Track Initiative (now known as the Global Partnership for Education).
He is largely accredited for enactment and adoption of national and international legislations, treaties and conventions as well as the constitutional amendment on child labour and education.
Satyarthi lives in New Delhi, India. His family includes his wife, daughter, son and a daughter in-law along with colleagues and umpteen number of children that he and his organization have rescued.
But the eternal question will always remain whenever Nobel peace prize is mentioned. How come Gandhiji who deserved it more than anybody else was not awarded the peace prize. The loser is the Nobel peace prize which has been denied this honor of respecting this apostle of peace and non violence. Ofcourse Gandhiji towers well and far above all these Nobel committees !
I caught a snippet of Malala arguing with an American TV interviewer. She was cool, intelligent, reasoning ...and wiped the floor with him. This is not a girl who just happened to shoot to stardom because she was the unfortunate victim of a terrorist attack: she is a great human.
Apropos of Gandhiji being denied the Nobel Peace prize, his name was indeed proposed several times during the early 1940s, but was sabotaged by Winston Churchill, whose hatred for Gandhiji is well known. Gandhiji was not one to care about such awards. Also there is no provision for posthumous awards of the Nobel Prizes. It is indeed gratifying to learn that, if not in any field of Science, at least the Peace prize has been earned by an Indian citizen.
kapali,
A true gandhian shares the prize this year. I am certain that Gandhiji in heaven is pleased no end. He was gone in 1948, and how much the world has changed since! In some good ways too, otherwise a Mother Teresa and this year's recipients would not have been the winners of the prize. Many men and women in the world considered him their role model, the most well-known in the world being Martin Luther King Jr, of course.
Without him, this would not have happened to the young woman and the man who has dedicated himself to the welfare of children.
In our Languages Section (tamizh), we have several threads on mahA periyavar Sri Chandra Shekara Saraswathi. These great souls have been beacons, in spite of what limited them: Gandhiji, in spite of being a citizen of an enslaved country, the SankarAchAryA though a religious head, leading his flock not only religiously but by being a pragmatist too.
In the end, the prizes are only of limited importance. What these great ones brought to this world is priceless, I think...
Arasi, what you have expressesd is true. But sometimes like MDR not being awarded Sangitha Kalannadi , Gandhiji not being awarded Nobel peace prize keeps nagging one's mind. As you said let us be happy who are now being rightly rewarded.
I would say that for these dedicated souls any such award or recognition would serve at best as comfort and encouragement, not a reward. I imagine that for them the true reward would be in seeing the goals they struggle for being realised. Gandhi has been more widely recognised and is better remembered than any Nobel prize winner. It seems unnecessary to hanker after a prize of the year when he is going to be remembered in the hearts, minds, politics and lives of countless people for centuries to come.
