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 labor at great risk to their own lives.
By honoring 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 neighboring nuclear
powers as well as drawing attention to children's rights.
"This award is for all those children who are voiceless, whose voices
need to be heard," said Malala, who chose to finish her school day in
the central English city of Birmingham before addressing the media.
"They have the right to receive quality education. They have the right
not to suffer from child labor, not to suffer from child trafficking.
They have the right to live a happy life."
She said it was an honor 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.
Satyarthi has been at the forefront of a global movement to end child
slavery and exploitative child labor, which he called a "blot on
humanity."
"Child 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 labor in my lifetime," Satyarthi told The Associated Press at
his office in New Delhi.
News of the award set off celebrations on the streets of Mingora,
Malala's hometown in Pakistan's volatile Swat Valley, with residents
greeting each other and distributing sweets. At the town's Khushal
Public School, which is owned by Malala's father, students danced in
celebration Friday, jumping up and down.
When she was a student there, Malala was 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.
Malala was in chemistry class when the Nobel was announced and
remained with her classmates at the Edgbaston High School for girls.
Her father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, said the decision will further the
rights of girls.
"(The Nobel will) boost the courage of Malala and enhance her
capability to work for the cause of girls' education," he told the AP.
Malala is by far the youngest Nobel laureate, eight years younger than
the 1915 physics prize winner, 25-year-old Lawrence Bragg. Before
Malala, the youngest peace prize winner was 2011 co-winner Tawakkul
Karman of Yemen, a 32-year-old women's rights activist.
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.
"There is a lot of extremism coming from this part of the world. It is
partly coming from the fact that young people don't have a future.
They don't have education. They don't have a job," Jagland told the
AP.
Pakistani Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said the decision
"has given pride to the whole of Pakistan." India's President Pranab
Mukherjee said the prize recognized "the contributions of India's
vibrant civil society in addressing complex social problems such as
child labor."
By highlighting children's 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.
"In conflict-ridden areas in particular, the violation of children
leads to the continuation of violence from generation to generation,"
the Nobel committee said.
Commentators around the world praised the decision to focus on
children's rights.
"The biggest threat to the Taliban is a girl with a book," said Margot
Wallstrom, Sweden's foreign minister and a former U.N. envoy on Sexual
Violence in Conflict.
"The true winners today are the world's children," said U.N.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
Raised in Pakistan's ruggedly beautiful, politically volatile Swat
Valley, Malala was barely 11 years old when she began championing
girls' education, speaking out in TV interviews. The Taliban had
overrun her hometown of Mingora, terrorizing residents, threatening to
blow up girls' schools, ordering teachers and students into
all-encompassing burqas.
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 -- the bullet did not enter her brain -- and by the quick
intervention of British doctors visiting Pakistan.
No comments:
Post a Comment