Award
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Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi, advocates of girls’ education and children rights activist are joint winners of this year Nobel Peace Prize
| By Olu Ojewale | Oct. 20, 2014 @ 01:00 GMT |
THIS year Nobel Peace Prize is shared by Malala Yousafzai, Pakistani girls’ education activist, and Kailash Satyarthi, Indian children’s rights activist, the Norwegian Nobel committee announced on Friday, October 10. The committee decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2014 to Satyarthi and Yousafzai “for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education.”
Thus, at 17, Yousafzai has emerged the youngest winner in history.
Indeed, both Yousafzai and Satyarthi are prominent advocates for the rights of children. Yousafzai is known for her advocacy for girls’ education. In fact, she was shot in the face by the Taliban in 2012 after she defied their ban on girls’ education. After undergoing various surgeries to return her to normal, she later declared she was not afraid of being attacked again and set up a foundation promoting girls’ education.
“I wanted to speak up for my rights and also I didn’t want my future to be just sitting in a room and be imprisoned in my four walls and just cooking and giving birth to children. I didn’t want to see my life in that way,” she said in a BBC interview last year.
“I hope that a day will come (when) the people of Pakistan will be free, they will have their rights, there will be peace and every girl and every boy will be going to school,” she said.
Satyarthi has been fighting child labour and slavery since the 1990s, and that the joint award was given to him in recognition of his work to head various forms of protests and demonstrations, all peaceful, focusing on the grave exploitation of children for financial gain.
The joint awardees were chosen from a record field of 278 nominations, covering the year to February 2014. Among the other favoured nominees for this year were Pope Francis; Ban Ki-moon, secretary general of the United Nations; Edward Snowden, national security agency whistleblower, who alerted the world to the agency’s mass electronic surveillance; and Novaya Gazeta, a Russian independent newspaper, which has seen at least six of its journalists murdered in an atmosphere of increasing repression in Russia.
Other favourites included Denis Mukwege, a Congolese gynaecologist, who offers hope and treatment to survivors of sexual violence in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo; and Japanese People Who Conserve Article 9, a Japanese pacifist organisation opposing government steps to reinterpret a constitutional ban on the country engaging in military aggression.
Since its inception in 1895, the Nobel Peace Prize has rewarded individuals and organisations who promote peace. The prize has not been awarded 19 times, including during much of the first and second world wars.
Some critics this year said no obvious candidate stood out, advocating that the committee award no prize at all.
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