Kailash Satyarthy has received the Noble Peace Prize and has been been active in the Indian movement against child labour since the 1990s. Here are a few lesser known facts about him:
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.
He established New Delhi-based Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA) which has been at the head of the fight against child labour by creating domestic and international customer resistance to products made by bonded children, as well as with direct legal and advocacy work. Through a number of training programmes, Satyarthi also helps children sold to pay their parents' debts to find new lives and serve as agents of prevention within their communities.
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.
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 problem 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).
BBA started a Bal Mitra Gram, which are essentially model villages free from child exploitation and which promote child rights issues. Since the model's inception in 2001, it has transformed 356 villages as child friendly villages across 11 states of India, with most of the work concentrated in Rajasthan and Jharkhand. The children of these villages attend school, participate in bal panchayat (child governance bodies), yuwa mandals (youth groups) and mahila mandal and interact regularly with the gram panchayat. In BMGs, BBA ensures that children up to the age of 14 have access to free, universal and quality education and schools have proper infrastructure so that girls don’t drop out.
