Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi share Nobel Peace Prize

Spotlighting the struggle for children's rights, the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to Pakistani girls' education activist Malala Yousafzai and Indian children's rights activist Kailash Satyarthi, the Nobel committee announced in Oslo on Friday.

Still a high school student, Yousafzai, 17, is the youngest winner in history of a prize that is infrequently awarded to women. She was at school in Birmingham, England, when the prize was announced. Her first statement came only after the end of her school day, when she expressed gratitude for the award and emphasized: "This is not the end. … I want to see every child going to school and getting an education."

The choice is likely to be among the most inspiring and popular in years. Both Yousafzai and Satyarthi have made exceptional sacrifices, facing the very real possibility of death for their work advocating children's rights and education.

The decision was also packed with symbolism: a shared award for a Pakistani and an Indian, both struggling for children's rights in two neighboring rival powers, whose disputed borders in Kashmir have been wracked by intense shelling in recent days. The difference in the recipients' ages -- 17 and 60 -- underscored that the struggle for fundamental human rights is everyone's business, no matter how young or old.

The committee said the pair will receive the award "for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education." The 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."

Yousafzi, who also delivered her remarks on Friday in Urdu and Pashto, the languages of her home country, said she had spoken with Satyarthi. She said they have both agreed to encourage greater peace and cooperation between the two countries, and invited the prime ministers of India and Pakistan to join them when they receive their prize later this year.

Yousafzai captured the world's imagination by refusing to bow to terrorism after a Taliban gunman shot her in the face in 2012. Miraculously, she survived and recovered to undertake an international media and online campaign for the rights of women to be educated in her native Swat Valley.

In October last year, on Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show," she softly expounded on her philosophy of peace: If a member of the Taliban attacked her again, she said, she wouldn't stoop to her first reaction -- to hit him with a shoe.

"I said to myself, if you hit a Talib with your shoe, there will be no difference between you and the Talib. You must not treat others with that much cruelty and harshness. You must fight others, but through peace and through dialogue and through education." She said, "I will tell him how important education is and that I even want education for [his] children as well."

The Nobel committee noted that despite her youth, Yousafzai had become a global advocate for girls' education, showing that young people could foster change.

"This she has done under the most dangerous circumstances. Through her heroic struggle she has become a leading spokesperson for girls' rights to education," the committee said.

Yousafzai's hashtag, #StrongerThanFear, sums up her philosophy after the terrifying gun attack, which occurred when she was 15. The gunman asked for her by name before firing a bullet that went through her head, neck and shoulder. Four months later, declaring that she was not afraid of being attacked again, she set up a foundation promoting girls' education.

Addressing the United Nations in July last year, she said she didn't hate the man who shot her.

"They thought that the bullets would silence us. But they failed. And then, out of that silence came thousands of voices. The terrorists thought that they would change our aims and stop our ambitions but nothing changed in my life except this: Weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born. I am the same Malala. My ambitions are the same. My hopes are the same. My dreams are the same," she said.

She told the BBC in an interview last year that she didn't want to live "just sitting in a room and be imprisoned in my four walls and just cooking and giving birth to children."

On Friday, she said that when she was shot, "I had really two options."

"One was not to speak and wait to be killed. And the second was to speak up and then be killed. I chose the second one." She spoke up then because she wanted to go back to school. "I also had dreams, like a normal child has. I wanted to become a doctor at that time."

And now "I want to become a politician," she said, pausing and adding, "a good politician."

Satyarthi, one of the world's leading campaigners against child slavery, has staged countless raids in India over 30 years to free child slaves in the rug-making industry.

The former electrical engineer has led mass marches across India to draw attention to the plight of children and their parents bonded into labor. Satyarthi founded the Indian anti-child slavery movement, Bachpan Bachao Andolan, in 1980, and set up the Global March Against Child Labor in the 1990s, a network of organizations committed to wiping out child labor and slavery.

"Child slavery is a crime against humanity. Humanity itself is at stake here. A lot of work still remains but I will see the end of child labor in my lifetime," Satyarthi has said.

His ideals were expressed in his words: "If not now, then when? If not you, then who? If we are able to answer these fundamental questions, then perhaps we can wipe away the blot of human slavery."

The Nobel Committee cited the many protests Satyarthi has mounted against child slavery, all of them peaceful.

Satyarthi said he hoped the prize would draw more attention to the plight of children. "It's an honor to all those children who are still suffering in slavery, bonded labor and trafficking. It's an honor to all my fellow Indians. I am thankful to all those who have been supporting my striving for more than the last 30 years," he said in a CNN interview.

"A lot of credit goes to the Indians who fight to keep democracy so alive and so vibrant, where I was able to keep my fight on."

In Yousafzai's home town, Mingora, in the Swat Valley, supporters and civil society organizations Friday expressed joy over her award. Jubilant people poured into the streets, distributing candies and sweets.

"People in Mingora are happy and they feel pride over the award of Nobel Peace Prize to Malala," said Rashid Iqbal, a Mingora journalist.

Ahmad Shah, spokesman for peace committee Swat and a close friend of the Yousafzai family, said the people of the region were delighted by the prize. He said it gave people hope amidst targeted killings of peace activists.

"Malala is our hero. Malala once again emerged as a ray of hope for the people of region. We will never bow before evil forces," Shah said. "This is a matter of pride for every citizen of Pakistan and Malala has portrayed better image of the country."

Pakistan's government also hailed the award: "The country's brave daughter has made each and every Pakistani proud," said Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali.

In India, some criticized the Nobel committee's reference to a prize awarded to a Muslim and a Hindu, describing it as "patronizing" or "silly." However, the award was widely greeted as well-deserved.

"Malala was attacked; Kailash Satyarthi has been abused. Neither let the sneering bother them; they chased their dreams," said journalist Patralekha Chatterjee on Twitter.

Fellow child rights activist Anuradha Sahasrabudhe of nongovernment organization Dyana Devi hoped the award would draw attention to child rights and force the government to pay more attention to the problem.

"In India, especially, there is a serious lack of awareness and sensitivity which makes it difficult to give justice for the underprivileged children. Child labor, child trafficking, sexual abuse is rampant across the country," Sahasrabudhe said.

"I hope the Nobel Prize will be a catalyst in raising awareness and sensitivity in society about this cause, which Satyarthi, myself and many others are fighting for."

Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, hailed the choice in a tweet: "Malala & Kailash remind us that education is a human right essential for the exercise of all other human rights."

Yousafzai and Satyarthi were selected by the Nobel committee from a record field of 278 nominations, covering the year to February 2014.

The Nobel committee has drawn criticism in the past for an underrepresentation of women among the Peace Prize laureates and for some controversial awards, including one to President Obama shortly after he became president, and to Yasser Arafat and Henry Kissinger.

Among the other nominees this year were Pope Francis, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden and Russian independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, which has seen at least six of its journalists murdered in an atmosphere of increasing repression in Russia.

For more international news, follow @RobynDixon_LAT on Twitter.

Special correspondents Aoun Abbas Sahi in Islamabad, Pakistan, Zulfikar Ali in Peshawar, Pakistan, and Parth MN in Mumbai, India, contributed to this report. Times staff writer Christine Mai-Duc in Los Angeles also contributed to this report.

9:23 am.: This post was updated with more comments from Malala Yousafzai.

8:57 a.m.: This post was updated with Malala Yousafzai's first comments on the prize.

7:33 a.m.: This post was updated with new information about the Nobel Peace Prize recipients.

The first version of this post was published at 2:20 a.m. PDT.

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