Looking Forward to Peace with 2014’s Nobel Peace Prize!

If the news haven’t come to you yet, Kailash Satyarthi from India and Malala Yousafzai from Pakistan were awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize for 2014 today, for their “fight back” against the containment of children and young populace and for the right of all children to education, by the Norwegian Nobel Committee. This award has been bestowed upon famous people like Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King Jr. in the past.

The moment the announcement of Satyarthi’s and Yousafzai’s winning was made, social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter (mostly Twitter first, though) figuratively exploded with congratulatory posts and tweets from people belonging to both the countries.

People remarked that it was quite ironical that both the controversial countries, that are fighting with weapons on the border at the very moment, and yet what seems like a different world, both the same countries have shared the auspicious Nobel Peace Prize! To see to it, it is quite ironical in itself, I must admit.

Very little is known about the 60 years old, 8th Nobel laureate from India born in Vidisha near Bhopal, Kailash Satyarthi, to the youth, and people weren’t really aware who he is until today. Being the founder of Bachpan Bachao Andolan, he has helped free around 80,000 children from the brutal authority of slavery and child labour. Apart from that, he heads the South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude (SACCS), which rallies national and international institutions and NGOs to bring force on governments, manufacturers, importers, in order to stop exploiting illegal labour. Two of his colleagues have been murdered, but there he walked on the right path, and despite the false charges he was alleged to and the death threats that he’d faced, he never let go of his goal. And today, he is a proud winner of the prize.

We all know about Malala Yousafzai from Pakistan, who is hailed all over the world as a champion of women’s rights who stood up quite bravely against the Taliban to defend her beliefs. Yes, she is the same Malala who is globally known since 2012, when the gunmen from Taliban nearly killed her for her passionate advocacy on women’s right to education. Yousafzai has become a global campaigner for women’s right to education and several other human rights issues, such as those situations pertaining in Syria. “The wise saying, ‘The pen is mightier than sword’ was true. The extremists are afraid of books and pens,” she told the UN. “The power of education frightens them. They are afraid of women. The power of the voice of women frightens them.”

We congratulate both Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzai for winning this honor! This is indeed a very proud moment for both the countries, and perhaps this award has presented before us that if the winners of two very controversial nations can share this precious prize, us citizens of respective countries can share peace, too.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *