{"id":28470,"date":"2014-10-11T01:41:29","date_gmt":"2014-10-10T17:41:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=28470"},"modified":"2014-10-11T01:41:29","modified_gmt":"2014-10-10T17:41:29","slug":"child-rights-activists-malala-of-pakistan-kailash-satyarthi-of-india-win-nobel-peace-prize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2014\/10\/11\/child-rights-activists-malala-of-pakistan-kailash-satyarthi-of-india-win-nobel-peace-prize\/","title":{"rendered":"Child rights activists Malala of Pakistan, Kailash Satyarthi of India win Nobel Peace Prize"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Barack<\/a>
Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, and their daughter Malia meet with Malala Yousafzai in the Oval Office. White House<\/a> \/ Flickr.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

OSLO, Norway\u2014Taliban attack survivor\u00a0Malala\u00a0Yousafzai became the youngest Nobel winner ever as she and Kailash Satyarthi of India won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for working to protect children from slavery, extremism and child labour at great risk to their own lives.<\/p>\n

By honouring a 17-year-old Muslim girl from Pakistan and a 60-year-old Hindu man from India, the Norwegian Nobel Committee linked the peace award to conflicts between world religions and neighbouring nuclear powers as well as drawing attention to children\u2019s rights.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis award is for all those children who are voiceless, whose voices need to be heard,\u201d said\u00a0Malala, who chose to finish her school day in the central English city of Birmingham before addressing the media. \u201cThey have the right to receive quality education. They have the right not to suffer from child labour, not to suffer from child trafficking. They have the right to live a happy life.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said it was an honour to share the prize Satyarthi, who has worked tirelessly to protect children, and invited the prime ministers of both India and Pakistan to attend the Nobel ceremony in December.<\/p>\n

Satyarthi has been at the forefront of a global movement to end child slavery and exploitative child labour, which he called a \u201cblot on humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cChild slavery is a crime against humanity. Humanity itself is at stake here. A lot of work still remains but I will see the end of child labour in my lifetime,\u201d Satyarthi told The Associated Press at his office in New Delhi.<\/p>\n

News of the award set off celebrations on the streets of Mingora,\u00a0Malala\u2019s hometown in Pakistan\u2019s volatile Swat Valley, with residents greeting each other and distributing sweets. At the town\u2019s Khushal Public School, which is owned by\u00a0Malala\u2019s father, students danced in celebration Friday, jumping up and down.<\/p>\n

When she was a student there,\u00a0Malala\u00a0was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman two years ago for insisting that girls as well as boys have the right to an education. Surviving several operations with the help of British medical care, she continued both her activism and her studies.<\/p>\n

Malala\u00a0was in chemistry class when the Nobel was announced and remained with her classmates at the Edgbaston High School for girls.<\/p>\n

Her father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, said the decision will further the rights of girls.<\/p>\n

\u201c(The Nobel will) boost the courage of\u00a0Malala\u00a0and enhance her capability to work for the cause of girls\u2019 education,\u201d he told the AP.<\/p>\n

Malala\u00a0is by far the youngest Nobel laureate, eight years younger than the 1915 physics prize winner, 25-year-old Lawrence Bragg. Before\u00a0Malala, the youngest peace prize winner was 2011 co-winner Tawakkul Karman of Yemen, a 32-year-old women\u2019s rights activist.<\/p>\n

Committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland said it was important to reward both an Indian Hindu and a Pakistani Muslim in the common struggle for education and against extremism. The two will split $1.1 million.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a lot of extremism coming from this part of the world. It is partly coming from the fact that young people don\u2019t have a future. They don\u2019t have education. They don\u2019t have a job,\u201d Jagland told the AP.<\/p>\n

Pakistani Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said the decision \u201chas given pride to the whole of Pakistan.\u201d India\u2019s President Pranab Mukherjee said the prize recognized \u201cthe contributions of India\u2019s vibrant civil society in addressing complex social problems such as child labour.\u201d<\/p>\n

By highlighting children\u2019s rights, the committee widened the scope of the peace prize, which in its early days was only given for efforts to end or prevent armed conflicts.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn conflict-ridden areas in particular, the violation of children leads to the continuation of violence from generation to generation,\u201d the Nobel committee said.<\/p>\n

Commentators around the world praised the decision to focus on children\u2019s rights.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe biggest threat to the Taliban is a girl with a book,\u201d said Margot Wallstrom, Sweden\u2019s foreign minister and a former U.N. envoy on Sexual Violence in Conflict.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe true winners today are the world\u2019s children,\u201d said U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.<\/p>\n

Raised in Pakistan\u2019s ruggedly beautiful, politically volatile Swat Valley,\u00a0Malala\u00a0was barely 11 years old when she began championing girls\u2019 education, speaking out in TV interviews. The Taliban had overrun her hometown of Mingora, terrorizing residents, threatening to blow up girls\u2019 schools, ordering teachers and students into all-encompassing burqas.<\/p>\n

She was critically injured on Oct. 9, 2012, when a Taliban gunman boarded her school bus and shot her in the head. She survived through luck\u2014the bullet did not enter her brain\u2014and by the quick intervention of British doctors visiting Pakistan.<\/p>\n

Flown to Britain for treatment at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, she underwent numerous surgeries but made a strong recovery.\u00a0Malala\u00a0now lives with her father, mother and two brothers in Birmingham. She has been showered with human rights prizes, including the European Parliament\u2019s Sakharov Award.<\/p>\n

Yet her memoir, \u201cI Am\u00a0Malala,\u201d published last year, reminded the world that she was still just a teenager\u2014one who likes TV shows such as \u201cUgly Betty\u201d and the cooking show \u201cMasterChef,\u201d who worries about her clothes and her hair and wishes she was taller.<\/p>\n

The Nobel committee said Satyarthi was carrying on the tradition of another great Indian, Mahatma Gandhi, who remains the most notable omission in the 113-year history of the Nobel Peace Prize.<\/p>\n

\u201cShowing great personal courage, Kailash Satyarthi, maintaining Gandhi\u2019s tradition, has headed various forms of protests and demonstrations, all peaceful, focusing on the grave exploitation of children for financial gain,\u201d the committee said.<\/p>\n

A.N.S. Ahmed, a well-known sociologist in India, said the award should prod the Indian government to do more in a country where a large number of children must support their families by engaging in dangerous jobs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe award will have a deep impact not just on the Indian government, but also on the civil society, to work with passion and improve the condition of children by enforcing their rights,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The founder of the Nobel Prizes, Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, said the prize should go to \u201cthe person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.\u201d<\/p>\n

The committee has interpreted those instructions differently over time, widening the concept of peace work to include efforts to improve human rights, fight poverty and clean up the environment.<\/p>\n

The Nobel Prizes in medicine, chemistry, physics and literature were announced earlier this week. The economics award will be announced on Monday.<\/p>\n

All awards will be handed out on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel\u2019s death in 1896.<\/p>\n

Ritter reported from Stockholm. Danica Kirka in Birmingham, Jill Lawless in London, Muneeza Naqvi in New Delhi, Sherin Zada in Mingora, Pakistan, and Kathy Gannon in New York contributed to this report.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OSLO, Norway\u2014Taliban attack survivor\u00a0Malala\u00a0Yousafzai became the youngest Nobel winner ever as she and Kailash Satyarthi of India won the Nobel …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":28471,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1145,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headline","category-news-w","mauthors-mark-lewis","mauthors-karl-ritter","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}