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Nobel Peace Prize Winner Kailash Satyarthi: A Man with A Mission

Nobel Peace Prize Winner Kailash Satyarthi: A Man with A Mission

While just about everyone has heard about this year’s 17 yr old Nobel Peace prize winner Malala Yousefzai, few are familiar with joint winner Khailash Satyarthi.

The Nobel Prize committee said, in referring to its choice this year that it ”regarded it as an important point for a Hindu and a Muslim, an Indian and a Pakistani to join in a common struggle for education and against extremism.”

Satyarthi came to Stockholm this week to explain how to combat what he calls” a stealing of the future” for millions of poor children around the world, who are forced to work.

He’s been fighting for their rights for over three decades.

He remembered a Nepali boy whom he led a peace march with, who asked him a simple question about poverty:

”Is the world so poor that it cannot give a toy or a book instead of forcing me to take a tool or a gun?”

Only through uniting our efforts on a global scale can we really make progress in protecting childrens rights, Satyarthi says.

”For me, as an ordinary grass roots activist, I feel that the solutions are found on the ground. Where the problem is. And with the people, individuals, local organisations, local NGOs who may not be known to you and me. Who have not been given any awards, and not yet recognized, The solution lies with them.”

He founded Bachpan Bachao Andolan, or the Movement to Save Childhood in 1980.

The organisation has rescued and rehabilitated over 80,000 child labourers.

But there are an estimated 168 million children in the world today who are still working in often dangerous conditions.

Satyarthi says he would like to see a Global Centre for Children’s Rights set up.

”An institute or a place where all these grass roots experiences and academic knowledge could merge and further propelled by NGOs, by businesses, by governments, by intergovernmental agencies…by everyone.”

Renee Andersson , Ethics and Environment manager at Indiska, a major clothing importer in Scandinavia, says that enacting child labour laws only helps to a certain extent.

”When I started 16 years ago to audit companies, suppliers to us in India, China and our other production companies it was really, really horrible. Also for adults. We found out that the laws in both India, China, Bangladesh are almost as good as the swedish laws, but they were not implemented.”

Poverty , says Satyarthy, is always brought up as the cause, an excuse, for a child to be exploited, often by their own families.

But he says we are suffering from a different kind of poverty.

”The poverty lies somewhere inside us. The poverty of compassion, The poverty of mutual responsibility. Let us unite this compassion to unite the world.”
 
A transfer of six days of military spending in  rich countries to education would put all children in school by 2015.

15% of the money spent yearly on tobacco in the US would do the same.

  • Sweden
  • India
  • Nobel Peace
  • Khailash Satyarthi
  • Ric Wasserman
  • eng

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