Bachpan Bachao Andolan chief Kailash and Pakistan’s Malala Yousafzai receive Nobel Peace Prize
India’s Kailash Satyarthi received the Nobel Peace Prize for 2014 on Wednesday, sharing it with Pakistan’s Malala Yousafzai, the youngest ever Nobel laureate, for their work on promoting child rights in the sub-continent. “Satyarthi and Yousafzai are precisely the people whom Alfred Nobel in his will calls ‘champions of peace’,” Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee Thorbjorn Jagland said in his speech before awarding them the prize.
Satyarthi, 60, who gave up his job as an electrical engineer to run an NGO for rescuing children from forced labour and trafficking, and 17-year-old Malala, who survived a near-fatal Taliban attack two years ago with determination advocating education for girls, were named by the Nobel Peace Prize Committee for the prestigious award on October 10.
They received the Nobel medal which is 18 carat green gold plated with 24 carat gold and weighs around 175 grams. They will share $1.1 million prize money.
Satyarthi’s NGO Bachpan Bachao Andolan prides itself on liberating over 80,000 children from bonded labour in factories and workshops across India. According to the International labour Organisation (IlO) there are about 168 million child labourers globally. There are roughly 60 million child labourers in India alone.
Speaking after receiving the award, Satyarthi started off his speech by reciting a mantra from the Vedas. However, he lost a page of his speech and wondered whether this had happened before to any other Nobel laureate. “Solutions are not found only in the deliberations in conferences and prescriptions from a distance...Friends what is missing now of course is my (speech) paper,” he said amid peals of laughter in the Oslo City Hall where he received the coveted prize.
“But, no problem, I will continue without that,” the 60-year-old said, quickly regaining composure.
Satyarthi said, “Friends, the Nobel Committee generously invited me to deliver a ‘lecture’. Respectfully, I am unable to do that. I represent here the sound of silence, the cry of innocence, and, the face of invisibility. I have come here to share the voices and dreams of our children, our children, because they are all our children.”
He asked the audience to feel the child inside them and said the crime against children has no place in a civilised society. Satyarthi said, “My dream is to make every child free to develop...There is no greater violence than to deny the dreams of children.”
Recounting his experience with the unprivileged people, he said, “I am representing the sound of silence of millions of children who are left behind… The credit to this honour goes to people who worked and sacrificed for freeing children.”
“I refuse to accept that the shackles of slavery can ever be stronger than the quest for freedom…let us inculcate and transform the individuals’ compassion into a global movement. let us globalise compassion. Not passive compassion, but transformative compassion that leads to justice, equality, and freedom,” Satyarthi said.
Invoking Mahatma Gandhi, he said, “If we are to teach real peace in this world... We shall have to begin with the children. I humbly add, let us unite the world through the compassion for our children.”
Malala, who was nominated in the peace prize category last year also, had displayed tremendous courage even after the Taliban attack when she resolutely expressed her determination to carry on with her campaign for child rights and girls education especially in a country like Pakistan.
In her speech, she said, “I am honoured to receive this award together with Kailash Satyarthi, who has been a champion of children’s rights for a long time. Twice as long, in fact, than I have been alive. I am also glad that we can stand together and show the world that an Indian and a Pakistani can be united in peace and together work for children’s rights.”
“This award is not just for me. It is for those forgotten children who want education. It is for those frightened children who want peace. It is for those voiceless children who want change,” she said in her acceptance speech.
She dedicated the Nobel Prize money to the Malala Fund, to help give girls everywhere a quality education. Famed Pakistani singer Rahat Fateh Ali Khan and Indian musician Amjad Ali Khan performed at the award ceremony. Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani was among those present on the occasion.