The Nobel Peace Prize 2014 was awarded to the Pakistani young activist Malala Yousafzai and the Indian elder children’s rights advocate Kailash Satyarthi. In this occasion, in accordance with its own aims and mission of spreading peace principles in the world, CESIE wants to express how important it is to spread their action.
In compliance with the Alfred Nobel criteria for the Nobel Peace Prize, the struggle against suppression and the fight for the rights of children strongly sustain the building of “fraternity among nations”. This is a capital issue because, thanks to Malala and Kailash‘s action, India e Pakistan come together in a common struggle for education and against extremism. Both of them, indeed, struggled in their own countries against the daily violations of children rights. That is why the Nobel Committee decided to award them within a delicate time of tension in Indian-Pakistani relations.
With regard to the serious children’s exploitation for economic purposes, Kailash Satyarthi, maintaining Gandhi’s tradition and showing a great courage, exploited various forms of peaceful protests and non-violent demonstrations. On the other hand, despite the Taleban intimidation towards her, Malala Yousafzay fought for several years for the children’s right to education. Her struggle demonstrated that children and young people too can contribute to improve their own situation.
Allegedly, there are about 168 million child labourers around the world today. Purely from a liberal and universal perspective, there are some unalienable rights which cannot be infringed. One such is unequivocally children’s right to education.
Moreover, according to general statistics, in the poor countries of the world, 60% of the present population is under 25 years of age: this is children’s exploitation target. Child right to education appears to be a fundamental human right violated both in India and Pakistan. In addition to this, even though child labour is illegal in India, laws are hardly ever enforced.
Children need to study instead of being exploited for economic reasons. In particular, in conflict-ridden areas, the violation of children’s right leads to the continuation of violence from generation to generation. The respect of children’s right to study is the fundamental prerequisite for peaceful global development.
Therefore, thanks to Malala and Kailash‘s action, the world is slowly approaching the goal of eliminating child labour exploitation even though convictions for offences such as child trafficking are still extremely rare. The latter unequivocally suggests that governments can and should intervene in order to put to a halt to such a detrimental phenomenon.
Only through the means of global commitments, civil society movements, effective legislation and individual initiatives people can flourish in a safe and productive environment which would in turn make them active participants in the progress of their nations.
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