Are children’s rights finally at the top of the agenda?
December 2014
Last week Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi, two renowned children’s rights activists and advocates, officially received the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway. This is a groundbreaking decision which puts children’s rights at the top of the international human rights agenda.
Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi received the Nobel Peace Prize on 10 December 2014 in Oslo, Norway.
Recognising two children’s rights advocates as “champions of peace could be a turning point and create further momentum towards better implementation of children’s rights.
There is still much to be done to advance this agenda. Although we just celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in November, children’s rights are still constantly violated across the globe. And as JK Rowling, the renowned author of the Harry Potter series stated in a recent event hosted by Lumos: “Who is easier to silence than a child?” Children often cannot speak for themselves.
Fighting for children’s rights to education, Malala Yousafzai extended her message to all children’s rights in her acceptance speech: “[this award] is for those forgotten children who want education. It is for those frightened children who want peace. It is for those voiceless children who want change.”
She added, “I am here to stand up for their rights, raise their voice. It is not time to pity them. It is time to take action so it becomes the last time that we see a child deprived of education.”
Likewise, Kailash Satyarthi received his prize representing “the sound of silence; the cry of innocence; and the face of invisibility.” He said, “I have come here to share the voices and dreams of our children, our children, because they are all our children.”
He added that “the single aim of [his] life is that every child is: free to be a child, free to grow and develop, free to eat, sleep, see daylight, free to laugh and cry, free to play, free to learn, free to go to school, and above all, free to dream.”
These two new Nobel Peace Prize laureates give a powerful message to the world: children’s rights will not be forgotten any longer. Let’s hope the world will act on it.