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Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi Are Awarded Nobel Peace Prize
Two Champions of Children Are Given Nobel Peace Prize
(about 2 hours later)
Reaching across gulfs of age, gender, faith, nationality and even international celebrity, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the 2014 peace prize on Friday to Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan and Kailash Satyarthi of India. The award joined a teenage Pakistani known around the world with an Indian veteran of campaigns to end child labor and free children from trafficking.
KABUL — “Who is Malala?” shouted the Taliban gunman who leapt onto a crowded bus in northwestern Pakistan two years ago, then fired a bullet into the head of Malala Yousafzai, a 15-year-old schoolgirl and outspoken activist.
Ms. Yousafzai, 17, the youngest recipient of the prize since it was created in 1901, said Friday in a news conference in Birmingham, England, “I’m proud that I’m the first Pakistani and first the young woman, or the first young person, who is getting this award.”
That question has been answered many times since by Ms. Yousafzai herself, who survived her injuries and went on to become an impassioned advocate, global celebrity and, on Friday, the latest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize alongside the Indian child rights campaigner Kailash Satyarthi.
She will share the $1.1 million prize equally with Mr. Satyarthi, 60, who is not nearly so widely known as Ms. Yousafzai.
Yet since that decisive gunshot in October 2012, Ms. Yousafzai and her compelling story have been reshaped by a range of powerful forces — often, though not always, for good — in ways that have left her straddling perilous fault lines of culture, politics and religion.
“If with my humble efforts the voice of tens of millions of children in the world who are living in servitude is being heard, congratulations to all,” Mr. Satyarthi said Friday in an interview with NDTV in India.
In Pakistan, conservatives assailed the schoolgirl as an unwitting pawn in an American-led assault. In the West, she came to embody the excesses of violent Islam, or was recruited by campaigners to raise money and awareness for their causes. Ms. Yousafzai, guided by her father and a public relations team, helped to transform that image herself, co-writing a best-selling memoir.
The award was announced in Oslo by Thorbjorn Jagland, the committee’s chairman, who said: “The Nobel Committee regards 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.”
And now the Nobel Prize committee has provided a fresh twist on her story, recasting her as an envoy for South Asian peace.
“Children must go to school and not be financially exploited,” Mr. Jagland said. “It is a prerequisite for peaceful global development that the rights of children and young people be respected. In conflict-ridden areas in particular, the violation of children leads to the continuation of violence from generation to generation.”
Announcing the prize in Oslo on Friday, chairman Thorbjorn Jagland said it was important for “a Hindu and a Muslim, an Indian and a Pakistani, to join in a common struggle for education and against extremism” — a resonant message in a week in which the Pakistani and Indian armies have exchanged shellfire across a disputed stretch of border, killing 20 villagers. But it was also a message that highlighted how far Ms. Yousafzai has come from her original incarnation as the schoolgirl who defied the Taliban and lived to tell the tale.
“Showing great personal courage, Kailash Satyarthi, maintaining Gandhi’s tradition, has headed various forms of protests and demonstrations, all peaceful, focusing on the grave exploitation of children for financial gain,” Mr. Jagland said. “He has also contributed to the development of important international conventions on children’s rights.”
Amid the debate about the politics of her celebrity, few question the heroism of Ms. Yousafzai — a charismatic and exceptionally eloquent teenager who has followed an astonishing trajectory since being airlifted from Pakistan’s Swat Valley. At just 17, she has visited with President Obama and the queen of England, addressed the United Nations, and become the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize since it was created in 1901.
Ms. Yousafzai said she spoke by telephone with Mr. Satyarthi and that they agreed to work together for better opportunities for children and to help their two countries overcome their differences.
She learned of her win on Friday when a teacher called her from a chemistry lesson at Edgbaston High School for girls in Birmingham, the English city she now calls home.
“We also decided that since he’s from India and I’m from Pakistan that we would try to bring a strong relationship to India and Pakistan,” Ms. Yousafzai said in the news conference, adding that she and Mr. Satyarthi would invite Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan to the Nobel ceremony in Oslo in December.
“I was totally surprised when she told me, ‘Congratulations, you have won the Nobel Peace Prize, and you are sharing it with a great person who is also working for children’s rights,’ ” Ms. Yousafzai told a news conference.
Ms. Yousafzai was shot in the head by the Taliban in 2012 for campaigning on behalf of girls’ education in the Swat Valley of Pakistan. She was 15 at the time. Since then, she has become a global emblem of her struggle, celebrated on television and publishing a memoir.
She will share the $1.1 million prize with Mr. Satyarthi, 60, a veteran, soft-spoken activist who has rescued trafficked children from slavery.
She “has already fought for several years for the right of girls to education and has shown by example that children and young people, too, can contribute to improving their own situations,” Mr. Jagland said. “This she has done under the most dangerous circumstances. Through her heroic struggle, she has become a leading spokesperson for girls’ rights to education.”
“If with my humble efforts the voice of tens of millions of children in the world who are living in servitude is being heard, congratulations to all,” Mr. Satyarthi said in a television interview on Friday.
Underscoring the hostilities the Nobel committee seemed to wish to ease, troops from Pakistan and India had exchanged artillery and machine-gun fire across their disputed Himalayan border in the days before the announcement. The most recent eruption of fighting has so far killed 11 Pakistani and eight Indian villagers, but by Friday, a lull had set in, news reports said.
There had been some speculation that the Nobel committee, which last year gave the prize to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, might withhold it this year, as they did in 1972 during the Vietnam War.
In the speculation that invariably precedes the announcement of the award, Ms. Yousafzai had been a favorite for two successive years. This year, some forecasters spoke of Pope Francis, and others said it was likely the committee would withhold the prize, as it last did during the Vietnam War in 1972 because the global horizon seemed so scarred by conflict.
Yet Ms. Yousafzai offered an emotional counterpoint to grinding conflict in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere. “With her courage and determination, Malala has shown what terrorists fear most: a girl with a book,” said Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general.
The nomination of Ms. Yousafzai, however, seemed in part to be intended as an inspirational message, offering a counterpoint to conflicts in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere.
In Pakistan, she has come to symbolize the country’s existential struggle against Islamist violence. She rose to prominence in 2009 as the author of an anonymous blog that described life in Swat at a time when bearded fighters, armed with Kalashnikovs, terrorized the valley’s residents and shut schools where girls were being educated.
In a statement on Friday after the prize was awarded, Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, said, “With her courage and determination, Malala has shown what terrorists fear most: a girl with a book.”
Later, she became a national news media figure, speaking passionately about the need for peace, which drew her squarely into the Taliban’s cross hair. In the summer of 2012, the insurgents hatched a plan to kill her, then put it into action that October.
Last year, Ms. Yousafzai won several European awards and published a memoir of her experiences, “I Am Malala.” The title echoed the circumstances of her shooting. When the Taliban gunman boarded her bus, he called out, “Who is Malala?” As she noted in an interview last year, her voice is now heard “in every corner of the world.”
After the shooting, with life-threatening wounds to her head, Ms. Yousafzai was flown to Britain for treatment. But back in Pakistan, a news media-driven backlash had already started, some of it by crude conspiracy theories — accusations that the teenager was a C.I.A. agent, a blasphemer or a traitor.
Ms. Yousafzai was at school in Birmingham, where she has lived since being treated for her gunshot wounds, when the prize was announced and was taken out of her chemistry class to be informed of the award.
But more reasonable people were discomfited, too — in particular by the way Western news media outlets lionized Ms. Yousafzai at a time when American drones were pounding targets in the tribal areas, sometimes killing civilians.
The Taliban were the reason that Ms. Yousafzai had come to public prominence. She wrote a blog in 2009 that detailed life in the Swat Valley under Taliban rule, at a time when bearded fighters, armed with Kalashnikovs, had terrorized the valley’s residents and shut schools where girls were being educated.
“Malala’s story, and the way it was framed, fitted neatly into a certain Western narrative,” said Ziyad Faisal, an economics student in Milan, Italy. “But at the end of the day, she’s just a teenage girl. She means so many things to so many people.”
After the Taliban were expelled from Swat, Ms. Yousafzai went on to become a national media figure. Ms. Yousafzai spoke passionately about the need for peace and education for girls on television programs. She was encouraged by her schoolmaster father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, who had nurtured his daughter as an outspoken advocate from an early age.
After surgeons inserted a titanium plate in her head, Ms. Yousafzai made a rapid recovery, and quickly drowned out her critics with her preternatural poise and speaking skills. She shifted her focus, moving away from the fight against the Taliban and toward a broader advocacy for children’s education. An alliance with Gordon Brown, the former British prime minister turned education campaigner, honed a message she continued to deliver on Friday.
But that advocacy earned the wrath of the Taliban, which convened a secret meeting to plan her assassination.
“This award is for all those children who are voiceless, whose voices need to be heard,” she said. “I speak for them, and I stand up with them.”
In the months after her recovery, Ms. Yousafzai took the first steps toward establishing her global celebrity. She met with a President Obama and his family in the White House and was lionized by a host of celebrities.
But that advocacy — important yet politically inoffensive — has also drawn sharp criticism from those who say that the choice of Ms. Yousafzai exemplifies the way the Nobel Prize has strayed far from the purpose intended by Alfred Nobel, the Swedish chemist who invented dynamite and who originated the prize.
Back in Pakistan, however, things were less clear. Conservative Pakistanis spread malicious stories claiming that Ms. Yousafzai’s plight had been exaggerated by a gullible Western news media, or that she was somehow in the employment of American intelligence. The Taliban vowed to redouble their efforts to assassinate the schoolgirl should she ever return to the country.
“This is not for fine people who have done nice things and are glad to receive it,” said Fredrik Heffermehl, a Norwegian jurist who has written a book on the prize. “All of that is irrelevant. What Nobel wanted was a prize that promoted global disarmament.”
The conspiracy theories reflected broader tensions between Pakistan and the United States. Although most Pakistanis prize education, and a minority sympathizes with the Taliban, the rush by Western leaders to heap praise on Ms. Yousafzai was seen by many as a rebuke of Pakistan at a time of painful relations with the United States.
Nonetheless, for the many Pakistanis and Indians who enthusiastically hailed the joint win by Ms. Yousafzai and Mr. Satyarthi, it was a welcome taste of what unites, rather than divides their countries: a shared interest in education and in improving the plight of millions of downtrodden and abused children. And for Ms. Yousafzai, it brings her story full circle, back to South Asia.
For all that, news of the Nobel Prize on Friday inspired jubilation and well-wishers in the Swat Valley, who spilled onto the streets and distributed sweets in a traditional celebration.
Once-cynical voices in Pakistan were drowned out on Friday by a chorus of well-wishers. “A bright moment in dark times,” said Nadeem Farooq Paracha, a news media commentator, on Twitter.
“We have no words to express our feelings,” said Ahmad Shah, a family friend, speaking by phone from Mingora, the main town in the region. “Her efforts have been recognized by the world with this great prize. This is a victory for the people of Swat and of Pakistan.”
But a few clung to the old conspiracy theories. “Her shooting was a ready-made drama that was created by foreign powers,” said Ghulam Farooq, a newspaper editor in Ms. Yousafzai’s hometown, Mingora.
Mr. Shah said he had spoken to Ms. Yousafzai’s exiled father, who had called from England to gauge the reaction in the area.
Others noted ironies — that Pakistan’s previous Nobel Prize winner, a scientist from the minority Ahmadi community, had been widely shunned for his religious beliefs, and that for all of her globe-trotting, the one country that Ms. Yousafzai cannot visit, for security reasons, is her own.
For months after the attack on Ms. Yousafzai, some residents criticized the schoolgirl, fearing publicity around her case would invite further Taliban attacks. But now, Mr. Shah said he told Mr. Yousafzai by phone, “even those who were opposing Malala are happy.”
“Maybe Malala can come home now?” said Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy, a Pakistani filmmaker who won an Academy Award in 2012.
Some residents, however, clung to the conspiracy theories that have dogged Ms. Yousafzai’s reputation in Pakistan. “Her shooting was a ready-made drama that was created by foreign powers,” said Ghulam Farooq, the editor of a small local newspaper. “She has no real role in this Swat conflict.”
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.
