NEW DELHI — One is Muslim, the other Hindu. One a Pakistani, the other Indian. One a school girl, the other a man with decades of experience.
Despite their many differences, 17-year-old Malala Yousafzai and 60-year-old Kailash Satyarthi will be forever linked — co-winners of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize.
The Nobel Committee honored the two for risking their lives for the rights of children to education and to lives free of abuse. Their selection was widely acclaimed, their heroism undeniable.
“This award is for all those children who are voiceless, whose voices need to be heard,” said Malala, who chose to finish her school day in the central English city of Birmingham before addressing the media. “They have the right to receive quality education. They have the right not to suffer from child labor, not to suffer from child trafficking. They have the right to live a happy life.”
But something more was at work here: In awarding the prize Friday, the Nobel Committee also sent a blunt message to the rival nations of India and Pakistan that if two of their citizens can work for a common goal, their governments too could do better in finding common ground.
The two nations became enemies almost instantly upon gaining independence in 1947 from imperial Britain and have since fought three full-scale wars. Just this week, their troops hurled mortar shells and firing guns at one another across the Kashmir border.
The Nobel Committee’s chairman, Thorbjoern Jagland, acknowledged his panel gave the prize to Yousafzai and Satyarthi partly to nudge the two countries together, though he cautioned that the impact of the award should not be overestimated.
“You can see that there is a lot of extremism coming from this part of the world. It is partly coming from the fact that young people don’t have a future. They don’t have education. They don’t have a job,” Jagland said. “We want to show that people in all religions can come together in a common cause.”
Satyarthi has been at the forefront of a global movement to end child slavery and exploitative child labor, which he called a “blot on humanity.”
On Friday, he spoke about the potential to bridge divides. “I will invite her in a new fight for peace in our region,” he said about Malala.
He also said this year’s choice to award one person from each of the nuclear-armed neighbors in South Asia made “a great statement from the Nobel committee looking at the present scenarios between India and Pakistan.”
