2014 Nobel Peace Prize Awarded To Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzay

An anonymous reader writes: This year's Nobel Peace Prize has been given to Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzay for fighting to protect the rights of children and further their education. Yousafzay, at the age of 17, is the youngest recipient of the Peace Prize. Born and raised in Pakistan, she actively campaigned for girls' rights to education. In 2012, the Taliban shot her in the head, but she survived and continued her struggle. Satyarthi, a 60-year-old from India, has led many peaceful protests to fight against child slavery and illiteracy. "Satyarthi estimates that 60 million children in India, or 6 percent of the population, are forced into work. This, he believes, has nothing to do with parental poverty, illiteracy or ignorance. Above all, children are enslaved because employers benefit by getting their labour for free or for a pittance." This year's Nobel Peace Prize awards are also notable for bringing together an Indian and a Pakistani while their respective governments sustain a military conflict along a stretch of border between their countries.

Comments

Someone will complain about the political ones

[i kan reed]

But these are both great people who went through hell to great things. They could've awarded the peace prize to Hitler himself, and I'd still be thinking these awards are incredibly appropriate.

I wish I could've achieved as much as Malala when I was 17, and I can still aspire to achieve what Kailash did by the same I'm 60.

Fuck anti-education assholes, and fuck slavery.

Re:Someone will complain about the political ones

[asliarun]

I get Yousafzai.
What's the deal with the Indian guy Kailash? (as compared with the thousands of other charitable workers the world over?)
As an illustration, the reaction on this thread alone is 90%+ Yousafzai so far. Seems nobody gives a shit about Kailash...except the august Nobel committee.

Also Yousafzai should have won it LAST YEAR! When the said august Nobel committee passed her over for the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
Seems like the said august Nobel committee belatedly tried to redress the howls of political bullshitness in its selection process from last year.

The reason why this thread (along with all other threads) will be 90% focused on Malala is because - bluntly put - Malala is a lot more news-worthy than Kailash Satyarthi. On one hand, you have a young fragile good looking girl who is standing up against evil tyranny. On the other hand, you have a decidedly unsexy oldish guy who has been chugging along on his fight against child labor (which really is a fight against bonded or slave labor) for the past 3 decades.

It is a different matter that Kailash has been able to create an organization with over 80000 members and his efforts over the last couple of decades have directly resulted in hundreds of thousands of children from getting freed from the cycle of bonded labor. It is also a different matter that he was being considered for the Nobel peace prize for a decade now. But of course, there are many many people who are just putting their head down and doing their bit to improve the world. So why him, right? He didn't even have a meaningful twitter following until this news just broke. Heck, even people in his country hardly knew about him, except in the NGO (India's term for not-for-profit organizations) circles. But that is modern media for you. And by extension, our modern attention spans.

Just to be perfectly clear, I am not begrudging Malala anything. Her courage and ambition and ability to leverage the publicity she has been getting - has been extraordinary. But to both Malala and Kailash - this award is a game changer for them - in terms of publicity and monetary support. In a very real way, the Nobel Peace prize has not just become an acknowledgment of effort but a very powerful tool to further boost their efforts.

I, for one, am really happy that the award went to these two, instead of presidents and famous politicians who really didn't need the award, except as a pat in the back.

Irony

[Richard_at_work]

Malala Yousafzay campaigns for womens and girls rights, and in the UK she gets sent to a private, segregated all girls school... I always found that slightly ironic.

Re: Because she had a big impact on peace on eart

[bill_mcgonigle]

an educated population is one of the best defenses against mindless wars. That's why it's so important to the corrupt governments that want to wage those wars to have control of the education systems in their societies.

Re: Get it

[Anonymous Coward]

"People of Pakistan and people of India have long been hostile?" Wrong. "Was the only time they were not hostile was during the Raj?". Utterly wrong again, rather the opposite. People of areas now comprising India and Pakistan were never so hostile except since Raj. As a mattef of fact these hostilities were sown due to Raj's divide-and-rule approach.

Re: Because she had a big impact on peace on eart

[ShanghaiBill]

Is there any proof for your hypothesis?

Yes, there is evidence. The US invasion of Iraq was not history's bloodiest war, but it was one of the dumbest. Polls taken in 2002-2003 clearly show that opposition to that invasion was strongly correlated with education level. High school dropouts were the most likely to favor invading, and people with graduate degrees were the most likely to oppose it.

This doesn't mean that education can prevent all wars, but maybe it can prevent the really dumb wars.