Nobel win will highlight children's plight: Satyarthi

NEW DEHLI: Indian activist Kailash Satyarthi said Friday his Nobel Peace Prize would help highlight the plight of children around the world, and invited fellow winner Malala Yousafzai to work with him. Speaking to journalists outside his office on the outskirts of New Delhi, Satyarthi said he had only heard of his win through the media. The 60-year-old activist, who has a relatively low profile even in India, congratulated Malala, the 17-year-old Pakistani girl who survived being shot in the head by the Taliban.

"The two of us have to work together, I know her personally, let us join hands for that (peace)," he said in comments broadcast on Indian television. "After receiving this award I feel that the people will give more attention to the cause of the children in the world."

He added it was a "good gesture" to give this year's prize to people from India and Pakistan, whose troubled relationship has led to three wars, two over the disputed Kashmir region.

The award to the two activists comes as tensions have heightened along the frontier of the nuclear-armed nations with cross-border firing killing seven on the Indian side and 13 on the Pakistani.

"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," said Thorbjoern  Jagland, the head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

Satyarthi heads the ‘Global March Against Child Labor’, a combination of some 2,000 social groups and union organisations in 140 countries.

"As I speak to you I am reminded of those children who must be toiling in brick kilns, mines and homes somewhere in the world," he said, adding that, "they remain invisible and unheard till date.

"Child labour is not only a problem in India, it is an international issue," he said.

He urged people around the world to campaign "to wipe off this blot from the face of mankind".

Satyarthi is credited with helping tens of thousands of children forced into slavery by businessmen, landowners and others to gain their freedom.

One of the children, Mohammed Manan Ansari, now 18, said he had been rescued as an eight-year-old from a mine in eastern India by Satyarthi's Bachpan Bachao Andolan or Save the Childhood Movement and given an education.

"He has a big heart," Ansari said, adding, "I will be indebted to him all my life."

Asked by reporters why he had become an activist, Satyarthi replied that, "Somebody had to do it".

"It was a passion from my childhood to work for children, I carried it forward," he said.

"I have been very strongly advocating that poverty must not be used as an excuse to continue child labour. It perpetuates poverty. If children are deprived of education, they remain poor."

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who won a landslide election victory earlier this year on promises to lift India out of poverty and modernize its economy, tweeted that, "the entire nation is proud of his momentous achievement."

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon congratulated both recipients of the peace prize, calling the teenager and Satyarthi "two of the world's greatest champions for children".

"Malala is a brave and gentle advocate of peace who through the simple act of going to school became a global teacher," he said.

Satyarthi's personal sacrifice "over many decades have helped raise public awareness, mobilise opinion leaders, and galvanise society", he said.