India's Kailash
Satyarthi, Pakistan's Malala Yousafzai
declared Nobel Peace prize winners
Child rights activists Kailash Satyarthi of India and Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, in
what is being seen as a highly symbolic push to end a decades-old rivalry.
Satyarthi has been heading a more
than three-decade long campaign for child rights, pushing for their education
and fighting against child trafficking and bonded labour.
“This award is recognition to all activists fighting against the
exploitation of children and slavery,” said the 60-year-old activist, the
second Indian to win a Nobel Peace prize after Mother Teresa who was given the
award in 1979.
Malala Yousafzai, now 17, is a schoolgirl and education
campaigner in Pakistan who was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman two years
ago.
The Nobel jury said the prize was going to the
two for “their struggle a against
the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children
to education."
Signalling a larger intent behind jointly awarding
the prize, the Nobel Committee said it “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.”
Satyarthi’s organisation, the New Delhi-based
Bachpan Bachao Andolan, has been at the head of the fight against child labour,
creating domestic and international consumer resistance to products made by
bonded children as well as with direct legal and advocacy work.
The father-of-two, who is an electrical engineer by
training, has rescued some 80,000 children sold to pay their parents' debts and
helped them find new lives.
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