Question

Malala the recipient of Noble prize is going to visit your school to give a motivational speech on children's rights/women's rights.draft a notice

Answer 1

Award Ceremony Speech

Presentation Speech by Thorbjørn Jagland, Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Oslo, 10 December 2014.

Thorbjørn Jagland, Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, delivering the Presentation Speech at the Nobel Peace Prize Award Ceremony.
Copyright © Nobel Media AB 2014


Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

A conscience exists in the world which extends beyond all national boundaries, and is independent of religion, culture and social adherence:  it states that children have a right to childhood; they have a right to go to school instead of being forced to work. They are not to start life as the slaves of others.

This "world conscience" can find no better expression than through Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzai.

Dear Nobel Prize Laureates,

A stronger expression of Alfred Nobel's appeal for fraternity between nations would be difficult to find except through you two.

We are honoured to have you here.

Congratulations!

The road to democracy and freedom is paved with knowledge.

Taliban and IS dislike knowledge because they know that it is an important condition for freedom. Attendance at school, especially by girls, deprives Taliban, IS, Boko Haram and similar movements of power.

But nothing should be further from Islam than using suicide bombs against their co-religionists or shooting at a young girl whose only demand was to be allowed to go to school.

Violence and repression can not be justified in any religion. Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism protect life and can not be used to take lives.

The two whom we honour here today stand very firm on this point. They live according to a principle Mahatma Gandhi gave expression to. He said: "There are many purposes I would have died for. There are no purposes I would have killed for".

Satyarthi and Yousafzai are precisely the people whom Alfred Nobel in his will calls "champions of peace".

This they are not only behind a desk, but in practice.

Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, ladies and gentlemen,

Kailash Sathyarthi's vision is quite simply to put an end to child labour. Since he abandoned a promising career as an electrical engineer in 1980, this has been Sathyarthi's overriding aim. He has worked at several different levels to achieve it. At grass-root level he has achieved the release of some 80,000 children, sometimes in very dramatic circumstances. He has often been brutally attacked. It takes little fantasy to imagine the reaction when he and his co-workers go into worn-down factory premises round about in India to set the children free. Powerful interests have profited from child labour. They do not give up without a struggle. Satyarthi himself has adhered to non-violence.

The child labourers are not infrequently recruited by kidnapping, but are often also hired out by parents who cannot manage their debts. Enslavement to debt remains very widespread, not only in India but also in many other countries.

Satyarthi insists that it is not poverty that leads to child labour. Child labour maintains poverty, carrying it on from generation to generation

School attendance releases people from poverty.

Satyarthi has developed a model for how liberated children can be rehabilitated and provided with education. They must be provided with a basic education to enable them to some extent to function as normal citizens rather than as slaves. He has set up a number of different organizations which work both in India and internationally to fulfil children's rights. Bachpan Bachao Andolan is perhaps his most important instrument, taking direct action to set children free.

Satyarthi's struggle is marked by great inventiveness. Rugmark, established in 1994 (now Goodweave), is a striking example. It is an international consortium of representatives of countries which export and import rugs. We can all by simple means check that a rug has not been made by child labourers. A network of inspectors has been set up to ensure that the system works. The children get to go to school, and the adult workers earn a fair wage.