By Adedayo Odulaja
The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded today, Friday, October 10 to India’s Kailash Satyarthi and Pakistan’s Malala Yousafzai for their struggles against the suppression of children and for young people’s rights, including the right to education.
Thorbjorn Jagland, chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, said ‘Children must go to school, not be financially exploited.’
Yousafzai achieved to global recognition in 2012 after the Taliban shot her in the head in her native Pakistan for her efforts to promote education for girls in the country. Since then, she has increased the volume of her campaign even and has taken her campaign to several places in the world.
Through her heroic struggle, she has become a leading spokeswoman for girls’ rights to education, said Jagland and according to the Nobel committee, at 17 she’s the youngest ever peace prize winner.
She was recently in Nigeria where she had a meeting with President Goodluck Jonathan on the issue of the Chibok girls abducted by Boko Haram elements from Government Girls Secondary School in April 2014.
Meanwhile, 60-year old Satyarthi has shown great personal courage in heading peaceful demonstrations focusing on the grave exploitation of children for financial gain, the committee said. Satyarthi told reporters that the award was about many more people than him — and that credit should go to all those ‘sacrificing their time and their lives for the cause of child rights’ and fighting child slavery.
‘It is a great honour for all those children who are deprived of their childhood globally,’ he said.
‘It’s an honour to all my fellow Indians who have got this honour — it’s not just an honour for me, it’s an honour for all those fighting against child labour globally.’
