It is perhaps natural that Malala (as she has become to be known) has attracted the most attention as a winner of this year's Nobel Peace Prize. However, she has a joint-winner - Kailash Satyarthi. He is far less known, certainly outside India. The New York Times provides a background about him.
"In India, Mr. Satyarthi, a former engineer, has long been associated with the struggle to free bonded laborers, some born into their condition and others lured into servitude. For decades, he has sought to rid India of child slavery and has liberated more than 75,000 bonded and child laborers in the country.
Mr. Satyarthi began working for children’s rights in 1980 as the general secretary of the Bonded Labor Liberation Front, an organization dedicated to freeing bonded laborers forced to work to pay off debts, real or imagined. He also founded the Bachpan Bachao Andolan, or Save the Children Mission, an organization dedicated to ending bonded labor and saving children from trafficking.
“This is a very happy moment for every Indian,” he said in comments aired on Indian television on Friday, adding that his efforts are to help give voice to the plight of marginalized children. He emphasized that child labor “perpetuates poverty.”
“Poverty must not be used as an excuse to continue child labor and exploitation of children,” he said. “It’s a triangular relationship between child labor, poverty and illiteracy, and I have been trying to fight all of these things together.”
Mr. Satyarthi also founded the Mukti Ashram, or Liberation Retreat, in the 1980s to teach bonded laborers, overwhelmingly children, new trades so they could participate freely in the Indian economy.
He worked toward their release through Supreme Court orders and saved children forced to embroider textiles in a factory in New Delhi, weave carpets in Uttar Pradesh and toil on rice fields in Madhya Pradesh. His work was at times dangerous, and he was assaulted by circus owners when he freed Nepali children working in the Gonda district of Uttar Pradesh.
He has spoken passionately on the issue of child rights and on the systemic forces, including the caste system, that contribute to bonded labor in India.
“Caste, religion, the political system, the economic system — all are helping the bonded labor owners,” Mr. Satyarthi said in an interview with The New York Times in 1992. “I believe in Gandhi’s philosophy of the last man, that is, the bonded laborer is the last man in Indian society, that we are here to liberate the last man.”
In 1998, he organized the Global March Against Child Labor across 103 countries, which helped to pave the way for an International Labor Organization convention on the worst forms of child labor.
For the previous two years, the prize had been awarded to international bodies: the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in 2013 and the European Union in 2012."
"In India, Mr. Satyarthi, a former engineer, has long been associated with the struggle to free bonded laborers, some born into their condition and others lured into servitude. For decades, he has sought to rid India of child slavery and has liberated more than 75,000 bonded and child laborers in the country.
Mr. Satyarthi began working for children’s rights in 1980 as the general secretary of the Bonded Labor Liberation Front, an organization dedicated to freeing bonded laborers forced to work to pay off debts, real or imagined. He also founded the Bachpan Bachao Andolan, or Save the Children Mission, an organization dedicated to ending bonded labor and saving children from trafficking.
“This is a very happy moment for every Indian,” he said in comments aired on Indian television on Friday, adding that his efforts are to help give voice to the plight of marginalized children. He emphasized that child labor “perpetuates poverty.”
“Poverty must not be used as an excuse to continue child labor and exploitation of children,” he said. “It’s a triangular relationship between child labor, poverty and illiteracy, and I have been trying to fight all of these things together.”
Mr. Satyarthi also founded the Mukti Ashram, or Liberation Retreat, in the 1980s to teach bonded laborers, overwhelmingly children, new trades so they could participate freely in the Indian economy.
He worked toward their release through Supreme Court orders and saved children forced to embroider textiles in a factory in New Delhi, weave carpets in Uttar Pradesh and toil on rice fields in Madhya Pradesh. His work was at times dangerous, and he was assaulted by circus owners when he freed Nepali children working in the Gonda district of Uttar Pradesh.
He has spoken passionately on the issue of child rights and on the systemic forces, including the caste system, that contribute to bonded labor in India.
“Caste, religion, the political system, the economic system — all are helping the bonded labor owners,” Mr. Satyarthi said in an interview with The New York Times in 1992. “I believe in Gandhi’s philosophy of the last man, that is, the bonded laborer is the last man in Indian society, that we are here to liberate the last man.”
In 1998, he organized the Global March Against Child Labor across 103 countries, which helped to pave the way for an International Labor Organization convention on the worst forms of child labor.
For the previous two years, the prize had been awarded to international bodies: the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in 2013 and the European Union in 2012."
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