Malala Yousufzai, the global icon of children’s rights who survived a near-fatal Taliban gun attack, was to become the youngest Nobel Peace Prize laureate yesterday, adding yet another distinction to a long list.
The 17-year-old Pakistani was to receive the peace prize in Oslo with Indian campaigner Kailash Satyarthi, 60, who has fought for 35 years to free thousands of children from virtual slave labor.
Yousufzai has already received a host of awards, standing ovations and plaudits from the UN to Buckingham Palace.
Photo: Reuters
However, on the eve of the ceremony she said she was far from ready to rest on her laurels.
“We are not here just to accept our award, get this medal and go back home. We are here to tell children especially that you need to stand up, you need to speak up for your rights... It is you who can change the world,” Yousufzai told a press conference at the Nobel Institute in Oslo. “In this world, if we are thinking we are modern and have achieved so much development, then why is it that there are so many countries where children are not asking for any iPad or computer or anything. What they are asking for is just a book, just a pen, so why can’t we do that?”
Yousufzai was 15 when a Taliban gunman shot her in the head in response to her campaign for girls’ education.
Although her injuries almost killed her, she recovered after being flown for extensive surgery in Birmingham, England.
She has been based in England with her family ever since, continuing both her education and activism.
For the first time ever, the blood-soaked school uniform she wore when she was shot near her home in the Swat Valley in October 2012 is to go on display in an exhibition at the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo this week.
At her invitation, five other teenage activists joined her in Oslo from Pakistan, Syria and Nigeria, including Shazia Ramzan, 16, and Kainat Riaz, 17, who were also shot during the Taliban attack on Yousufzai, and 17-year-old Amina Yusuf, a girls’ education activist from northern Nigeria where the Boko Haram abducted more than 200 schoolgirls during a raid in April.
Asked why she thinks some Muslim extremist groups are opposed to education for girls, Yousufzai, dressed in a multicolored headscarf, replied: “Unfortunately, those people who stand against education, they sometimes themselves are uneducated or they’ve been indoctrinated.”
The pairing of Yousufzai and Satyarthi had the extra symbolism of linking neighboring countries that have been in conflict for decades. After being named as a laureate, Yousufzai said she wanted both states’ prime ministers to attend the prize-giving ceremony in Oslo.
“If the prime ministers had come here, I would have been very happy. I would have thought of it as a big opportunity to ask them ... to make education their top priority and work on it together because we see the number of children who are out of school and suffering from child labor are mostly in India and Pakistan,” she said.
While Malala was to be the star of the annual Nobel extravaganza in Oslo — while the ceremony in Stockholm will feature literature prize winner, Frenchman Patrick Modiano, and his compatriot Jean Tirole with the economics award — her peace prize cowinner Satyarthi is far less well-known.
He welcomed the increased attention the Nobel brought to the cause of children in bonded labor.
“There are children who are bought and sold like animals,” the jovial 60-year-old, clad in traditional Indian dress, told reporters at the Nobel Institute.
“This is very important for millions and millions of children who are denied their childhood, who are denied their freedom, who are denied their education and health,” he said, adding that the peace prize had shone a spotlight on their plight.
Satyarthi’s organization, Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Movement to Save Childhood), prides itself on liberating more than 80,000 children from bonded labor in factories and workshops across India and has networks of activists in more than 100 countries.
According to the International Labour Organization there are about 168 million child laborers globally.
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