2014 Nobel Peace Prize Awarded To Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzay 144
An anonymous reader writes: This year's Nobel Peace Prize has been given to Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzay for fighting to protect the rights of children and further their education. Yousafzay, at the age of 17, is the youngest recipient of the Peace Prize. Born and raised in Pakistan, she actively campaigned for girls' rights to education. In 2012, the Taliban shot her in the head, but she survived and continued her struggle. Satyarthi, a 60-year-old from India, has led many peaceful protests to fight against child slavery and illiteracy. "Satyarthi estimates that 60 million children in India, or 6 percent of the population, are forced into work. This, he believes, has nothing to do with parental poverty, illiteracy or ignorance. Above all, children are enslaved because employers benefit by getting their labour for free or for a pittance." This year's Nobel Peace Prize awards are also notable for bringing together an Indian and a Pakistani while their respective governments sustain a military conflict along a stretch of border between their countries.
Someone will complain about the political ones (Score:5, Insightful)
But these are both great people who went through hell to great things. They could've awarded the peace prize to Hitler himself, and I'd still be thinking these awards are incredibly appropriate.
I wish I could've achieved as much as Malala when I was 17, and I can still aspire to achieve what Kailash did by the same I'm 60.
Fuck anti-education assholes, and fuck slavery.
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Re: Someone will complain about the political ones (Score:1)
Incorrect use of whom.
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To answer your question, it's "who", not "whom" here, since the pronoun is a subject.
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No, but I'm fine with the Peace Prize being extended to people who work to increase freedom and rights.
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You mean this guy [wikipedia.org]?
Re:Someone will complain about the political ones (Score:5, Insightful)
I get Yousafzai.
What's the deal with the Indian guy Kailash? (as compared with the thousands of other charitable workers the world over?)
As an illustration, the reaction on this thread alone is 90%+ Yousafzai so far. Seems nobody gives a shit about Kailash...except the august Nobel committee.
Also Yousafzai should have won it LAST YEAR! When the said august Nobel committee passed her over for the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
Seems like the said august Nobel committee belatedly tried to redress the howls of political bullshitness in its selection process from last year.
The reason why this thread (along with all other threads) will be 90% focused on Malala is because - bluntly put - Malala is a lot more news-worthy than Kailash Satyarthi. On one hand, you have a young fragile good looking girl who is standing up against evil tyranny. On the other hand, you have a decidedly unsexy oldish guy who has been chugging along on his fight against child labor (which really is a fight against bonded or slave labor) for the past 3 decades.
It is a different matter that Kailash has been able to create an organization with over 80000 members and his efforts over the last couple of decades have directly resulted in hundreds of thousands of children from getting freed from the cycle of bonded labor. It is also a different matter that he was being considered for the Nobel peace prize for a decade now. But of course, there are many many people who are just putting their head down and doing their bit to improve the world. So why him, right? He didn't even have a meaningful twitter following until this news just broke. Heck, even people in his country hardly knew about him, except in the NGO (India's term for not-for-profit organizations) circles. But that is modern media for you. And by extension, our modern attention spans.
Just to be perfectly clear, I am not begrudging Malala anything. Her courage and ambition and ability to leverage the publicity she has been getting - has been extraordinary. But to both Malala and Kailash - this award is a game changer for them - in terms of publicity and monetary support. In a very real way, the Nobel Peace prize has not just become an acknowledgment of effort but a very powerful tool to further boost their efforts.
I, for one, am really happy that the award went to these two, instead of presidents and famous politicians who really didn't need the award, except as a pat in the back.
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FYI: "NGO" stands for Non-Governmental Organisation. The term is not particular to India.
Otherwise, spot on.
Get it (Score:2)
Pakistan and India have been hostile since they first were separated from each other, but they're not so different!! Surely this gesture will make them realize this and they'll have no choice but to bury the hatchet, that's just how human psychology works.
Re:Get it (Score:4, Informative)
The people of Pakistan and the people of India have been hostile toward each other much longer than that. Of course, they weren't "people of Pakistan and India" before the end of British rule of what is now India and Pakistan.
About the only period they weren't hostile was during the Raj, when the British tried to prevent that sort of thing.
Note that during the post-British period, when they were split into two countries, the Hindus living in what is now Pakistan were attacked by their Muslim neighbors and driven out of the country.
Likewise, during the same period, the Muslims living in what is now India were attacked by their Hindu neighbors. This reached the point that trainloads of Muslims fleeing to Pakistan were stopped by the Indian Army and machinegunned before being allowed to continue into Pakistan.
Bury the hatchet in each other's head, yes.
The way you mean it, no.
And do you really know so little of human psychology?
Re: Get it (Score:4, Insightful)
"People of Pakistan and people of India have long been hostile?" Wrong. "Was the only time they were not hostile was during the Raj?". Utterly wrong again, rather the opposite. People of areas now comprising India and Pakistan were never so hostile except since Raj. As a mattef of fact these hostilities were sown due to Raj's divide-and-rule approach.
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There's no moral equivalence here.
I think it was Mohammad's rampaging armies and forcible conversions and associated brutality that created the initial bitterness between people of the same genetic stock. Today, the divide between those that converted and those that didn't still remains. Unfortunately, the brutality from those rampaging armies is still echoing today, with the converted being well indoctrinated. I mean, how many terrorist attacks do Hindus carry out in Pakistan, versus terrorist attacks t
Re: Get it (Score:1, Insightful)
Do you have any actual historical facts to back up any of that bigoted opinion of yours or is it just what you read on some redneck blog?
Communal Award (Score:1)
In 1932 British regime recommended Independent States for SC/ST/Dalit/Untouchable/Muslim/Sikh/Christian/Parsi/Buddhist/Jain communities in 2nd Round Table Conference. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
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Hindus were 26% of current pakistan before independence, now less than 2%. Muslims were 8% in 1947 in current India, now 16%. That tells a whole lot.
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Pakistan and India have been hostile since they first were separated from each other, but they're not so different!! Surely this gesture will make them realize this and they'll have no choice but to bury the hatchet, that's just how human psychology works.
Actually there is good scientific evidence for that.
http://www.sciencemag.org/site... [sciencemag.org]
Human Conflict
Why We Fight—In this special issue we consider the deep evolutionary roots of violent confrontation. We trace the trajectory of violence and war throughout history, exploring racism, ethnic conflicts, the rise of terrorism, and the possible future of armed conflicts.
tldr; Human conflict and mass exterminations are constants that have been going on for as long as we have historical or anthropological records. Reconciliation is just as much of a constant. Human populations fight and make peace.
Irony (Score:5, Insightful)
Malala Yousafzay campaigns for womens and girls rights, and in the UK she gets sent to a private, segregated all girls school... I always found that slightly ironic.
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Wait is that UK "private" or US "private"? They're almost opposite in meaning.
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Not really - a private school in the UK is also referred to as a public school and is funded in whole or in part by tuition fees, as opposed to a state school which is free to attend and paid by the government.
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The UK has private, public and state schools. Each is a different thing.
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I know that "public" has opposite meanings in the UK and US, but I didn't know "private" did. Her school is independent, as in not state-owned. It's a charity. And I don't see why it's ironic. "Girls should have the right to get an education" and "Education should only be provided by the state" are two entirely orthogonal statements.
Re:Irony (Score:5, Informative)
Plus I'm just taking a guess but there's probably security issues that are easier to handle in a private all girl school. She was shot point blank 3 times for her views after all, I wouldn't exactly feel 100% safe even if I was in the UK.
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Not all segregation is sexist. Women-only gyms, all-girls schools, female sports teams and competitions, none of these are ghettoes that women are forced into.
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Not all segregation is sexist. Women-only gyms, all-girls schools, female sports teams and competitions, none of these are ghettoes that women are forced into.
hm... Oh, I get it. If you are white and male you cannot be the victim of sexism or racism "Women-only gyms" aren't sexist against men, ladies' night isn't sexist against men (particularly gay men), all-girl schools aren't sexist against boys(depending on the reasoning behind the segregation). It's only sexist if it is an all men college, etc.
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I'd be wary of the term "sexist against". The purpose of ladies' night is to increase the pool of women that straight men can hit on by providing women an incentive. Somewhat more sinisterly, those women are able to consume more alcohol so their judgement is also likely to be more impaired on average.
So it's not really against men or against women, it's more complicated than that.
It is sexist though, and it's not actually universally legal.
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What's really ironic is Harvard awarding Malala Yousafzai "Humanitarian of the Year" [harvard.edu] for her efforts in promoting education for women.
Harvard started accepting women in 1999. Malala would have been two at the time.
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Sure, if you ignore the whole Radcliffe College (started in 1879) thing.
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Radcliffe didn't become a full part of Harvard until 1977. Only then could you argue that a Harvard degree and a Radcliffe degree were effectively the same thing.
Sure, at least Harvard was educating women, but there was still a definitive dividing line between "education for women" and "education for men" at Harvard through 1977 at the earliest.
Which still makes them honoring Malala Yousafzai somewhat ironic considering how long it took them to get around to providing women the same education they provided
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You are confusing the location of her education with her campaign for "the freedom of women and girls to be educated".
Ascribing motive to the location of her education is probably premature.
The perspective on this from Norway (Score:3, Informative)
There's some kind of myth that is sought to be promulgated by certain people that the Nobel committee is politically independent. That is completely wrong. The entire commitee is put together by votes in the parliament, and former and high profile politicians are heavily involved. So consider basically the committee's choices the result of the preferences of political appointees.
The current head of the commitee, Thorbjørn Jagland, is a former head politician of the Labour party. He was the one who gave the prize to Barack Obama. Of course, the commitee does have five people in it - but they are all political appointees, and the president has a double vote.
He has been severely and repeatedly criticised over many years, from high profile people, for completely ignoring Alfred Nobel's will. For example, here: http://www.vg.no/nyheter/innenriks/nobels-fredspris/nobel-forfatter-jagland-burde-gaatt-av-for-lenge-siden/a/10062076/ - headline "Jagland should have resigned a long time ago", criticism from the author of the book "Nobel's Will". Article about the author here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fredrik_Heffermehl .
Nobel's will states that the prize should go to whomever works to reduce standing armies and arrange peace conferences - it should go to efforts to reduce conventional wars.
The new conservative government has indicated that they are going to remove Jagland. Jagland has presented a conspiracy theory that this is because they are trying to please China. But that's probably not going to float, so the streak of madness and Labour party preference is going to end soon.
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It's hard to divorce politics from the notion of peace. There are people whose political beliefs go as far as the notion that going to war promotes peace. The best you can do is try to ensure there is non-partial input.
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Well, yeah. I'm sure everyone is looking for a better process to ensure fairness at all times. We'll disagree with you when you come up with something, but no one thinks the status quo is perfect.
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It's hard to divorce politics from the notion of peace. There are people whose political beliefs go as far as the notion that going to war promotes peace. The best you can do is try to ensure there is non-partial input.
I don't believe you are correct trying to divorce peace from politics. I don't want to hijack the conversation and turn the thread into a D vs. R debate so won't introduce blame here. That said, what if Obama had been able live up to his campaign promises and rhetoric? Personally I would have no problem with him winning the Peace prize if that was the situation.
Barack Obama did not receive the prize based on his actions or accomplishments, he receive the prize for what he put on a piece of paper. That i
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Actually your post is incredibly self-contradictory. You're miffed about Obama receiving the award, yet you think it should go to people who reduce warfare. Obama has been criticized constantly by the American right for not going to war often enough and hard enough. Your knee-jerk response will certainly be to list instances where Obama has used military force. But tally up the pile of corpses from this Presidency vs. the previous, and you will
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...not so much for getting shot, but for subsequently taking up the cause despite being shot, and at the risk of being shot again.
Some people seem to have the odd notion that Malala was a victim of random violence. The truth of the matter is that it was anything but random.
She did *not* take up the cause "because of" being shot or even "in spite of" it. Quite the opposite. She was marked for death by the Taliban precisely because (a) she was *already* an advocate for education for girls and (b) she was *already* working to expose the Taliban's horrid treatment of girls and women to the outside world. She is still so marked by them, a
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Is the problem that you were referring more to Yousafzay, and others who received the Peace Price for promoting human rights instead of minimizing conventional warfare? In that case, I simply think you are being overly pedantic. Peace and justice go hand in han
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I was not expecting this.. (Score:2, Funny)
Where's Obama's second Peace Prize?
Is that allowed? (Score:3, Insightful)
That ladies and gentlemen is what we call a zombie. Can a zombie win the nobel prize? Apparently so. I for one welcome our new teenage zombie overlords.
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I for one welcome our new teenage zombie overlords
...Teenage Zombie Hijab Rulers?
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*like* *upvote*
Sorry, I don't have any mod points, currently. But this issue badly needs an injection of humor. Somewhere.
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it's an interesting perspective. The nobel prize can't be given posthumously, the recipient must be alive. but what if the recipient is undead? this is a grey area.
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Re:Really? (Score:5, Informative)
lol, you have no idea what you're talking about and you can't even be bothered to check out wikipedia before you attack a teenage girl?
Let me make it easy for you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M... [wikipedia.org]
She attended school, despite threats from various, very scary groups that any girl caught doing so would be attacked.
There was basically a civil war while she was in school and girls were banned from attending, but she went anyways.
She worked for the BBC all this time, describing what it was like. Enlightening people in the west to the plight of girls in this area of the world.
Then the Taliban ordered her dead. A gunman drove up, ordered her to identify herself or he'd shoot them all. She did and was shot. She nearly died.
She survived the attack and continued to attend school.
This brought world wide attention to the plight of women in Pakistan.
She recovered, continued to attend school, got exiled, etc...
She's met with damn near every world leader.
Asked and received funding to support the education of women.
Got money from the UN
Wrote books, articles, blogs, etc... all encouraging young women to attend school and get an education no matter what.
At any point during all of this she could have simply attended private school and shut her mouth to avoid the threats but she refused.
Nobel Prizes are given for a lifetime of achievement. This girl has already done more in the less than 2 decades she's been alive then the whole of the Slashdot community combined. There are a lot of questionable Nobel awards out there, but this is not one of them.
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An assertive woman is a ballbreaker, yeah, right.
Listen up, homeboy: There can be no true peace without justice. Subjugation of women is not just.
BTW, "Gandhi" was simply her husband's name, which she assumed upon their marriage. Her husband (Feroze Gandhi) was not related to Mohandas.
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This girl has already done more in the less than 2 decades she's been alive then the whole of the Slashdot community combined.
I would not be so sure of that if I were you... Not everyone here posts under their real name and lists their real life accomplishments.
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Possibly not in the US, I would not know about the UK, but here in Europe, she regularly has been in the news and on the agenda for her work.
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Certainly in the west nobody has heard anything about the young girl since she was released from hospital after her recovery. I'm interested to know the real world changing accomplishments she has personally brought to fruition? In addition, Satyarthi "accomplishments" appear to be limited to one country. Is this then the Peace prize for India? I've seen Mother Teresa's name bounced around in justification because of her work in Calcutta but she worked in tends (if not more) nations around the world.
This is another Nobel fail. Nice people but not worthy of the prize.
I agree.
I admire both for standing up for their convictions and working hard to spread a message of a world with equal access to education and without child labour, However, their message, while relevant globally, seems to be limited to India and Pakastan.
Perhaps giving them the Nobel prize was a way that the committee thought to draw more global attention to the these human rights issues. I do agree that the achievement of global human rights and education can lead to world peace.
That being said, just pre
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In the interviews with her I've heard, she has also talked quite a bit about peace and how the likes of the Taliban do not stand for Muslims and how she understands her religion.
This cuts to one of the big problems facing us, namely the fact that groups such as the Taliban and ISIS are trying there hardest to make the west think that they are representative of Islam and therefore promote religious war.
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You are correct that Atyarthi is working in one country but you seem to forget (or don't know) it's the world's second most populated country and they have some horrendous problems re. women and children rights.
The award was also a sign to the people and politicians of India and Pakistan they are facing
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American news is horribly, terribly insular. I mean really, really bad.
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Again, what does any of that have to do with the Nobel Peace Prize? The girl has accomplished little other than to bring an additional reminder of the plight of women in Afghanistan and some other repressive Muslim countries. Has she brought substantial change in those countries? The man has done good deeds in India but not really anywhere else.
So in the first case you have the award going to a feel good, sympathetic figure and in the second, a country specific figure. Neither has brought peace to the w
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This is another Nobel fail. Nice people but brown and female so not worthy of the prize.
TFTFY.
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A whole bunch of people got jolted awake. You might not consider that positive, but some folks do.
And what the heck does Atyarthi have to do with NSA surveillance, anyway?
Good. (Score:1)
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Well making women sit at the back of the bus is a kind of Apartheid. Of course Americans usually are in favour of Apartheid, you just have to look at their friends such as the Saudis, Kuwait and various other middle eastern countries, even going so far as to bomb and invade one of the few countries where women had close to equal rights and making sure of a huge mess, but it did make sure women were back in their place, no more education or wearing skirts
Let's ignore Edward Snowden (Score:2, Insightful)
The Nobel "Peace" prize is such a farce. First we have warmonger Obama. Then we have Snowden completely ignored.
so no Obama? (Score:1)
Yeah... (Score:1)
What a damned shame that awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Obama has rendered it a joke for the rest of time. Used to be something prestigious and precious, an important statement...but then, they jumped the shark and now it's just a punchline.
It's snowing in Hell right now (Score:2)
Finally - a Peace Prize goes to someone who actually earned it!
Local Perspective? (Score:1)
Re: Because she had a big impact on peace on earth (Score:2, Insightful)
Neither has contributed much to the "fraternity of nations" and the "abolition or reduction of standing armies." Neither did Al Gore, who also won the prize. Truth of the matter is that the Nobel committee stopped handing out Peace prizes long ago and now hands out Ideologies We Like awards. The recipients may be very deserving of some sort of award, but few lately meet the original criteria of fostering peace and reducing war, Kissinger and Obama being the starkest proof of that. It's sad really: with all
Re: Because she had a big impact on peace on eart (Score:5, Insightful)
an educated population is one of the best defenses against mindless wars. That's why it's so important to the corrupt governments that want to wage those wars to have control of the education systems in their societies.
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Anonymous Coward, cos' he can't even spell his own name :-D
Re: Because she had a big impact on peace on eart (Score:5, Insightful)
Is there any proof for your hypothesis?
Yes, there is evidence. The US invasion of Iraq was not history's bloodiest war, but it was one of the dumbest. Polls taken in 2002-2003 [gallup.com] clearly show that opposition to that invasion was strongly correlated with education level. High school dropouts were the most likely to favor invading, and people with graduate degrees were the most likely to oppose it.
This doesn't mean that education can prevent all wars, but maybe it can prevent the really dumb wars.
That needs another caveat: (Score:2)
an educated population is one of the best defenses against mindless wars. That's why it's so important to the corrupt governments that want to wage those wars to have control of the education systems in their societies.
Because MISeducating their population is key. "Give them a light, and they'll follow it anywhere."
But this needs another caveat: If the population in general doesn't have any effective power over the goverenment, they can know exactly what's going on, be against it, but be utterly unable to
Re: Because she had a big impact on peace on eart (Score:4, Interesting)
I think I'll have to invoke Godwin on this one or for that matter post 9/11 US, education doesn't stop wacky wars. At least not education with a high degree of political slant and indoctrination, people can read/write or for that matter be an engineer/developer and still swallow political propaganda hook, line and sinker.
This is far older and simpler than this, it's opposition to equality of the sexes. They'd rather have their women be ignorant half-slave housekeepers, sex servants, child bearers and nannies. The first step is denying them any education so they're illiterate, then wrap them in burqas and make them terrified of contact with any other male who might treat them like a human being and finally subjugate them in law, to refuse your husband is never rape, no divorce, the kids belong to the father and if a woman gets raped let's punish her because obviously she tempted them in some way.
And just to get back on that education track, if the choices are no education, religious indoctrination (ev-uh-lution? what's that?) or government indoctrination I think for the most part I favor democratically imposed standards of education over individual whack jobs who want to inflict their wacky world view on their children. Not that I think public school is necessarily a good school, but most of them are pretty bland and expose you to a wide variety of other children with different backgrounds.
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That's only true of the American brand of libertarian. There are also leftists who are libertarian and they are the only ones who have had any real influence. Examples include Gandhi, the Dali Llama and Mandela.
Note I'm using the original definition of libertarian being the opposite of totalitarian and being one of the other 2 axis of politics.
Re: Because she had a big impact on peace on eart (Score:4, Insightful)
Did you not see how ISIS tries to control what is being taught in the schools about mathematics and chemistry?
The Taliban also do the same to keep women and girls out of education because they might learn about other possibilities and lose their dependence on men.
In the US, it was illegal in the early 1800s to teach slaves how to read or write. If a slave were to learn, they would quickly overpower their masters.
Why else do you think there were times when the Catholic church would shun science? Education of the stars took away the geocentric theory and was bound to take away our importance of being the center of the universe.
Authoritarians have throughout history done what they could to control education. An ignorant populace is not a threat. An educated populace is capable of organization and can quickly create problems for the powers that be.
Examples of racism in South Africa were actually greater towards the Indian population than the African population because Indians
Re: Because she had a big impact on peace on eart (Score:1)
>Do you see any women grow their >food,
Yes
>take there trash out,
Yes of course
>build their house,
Yes.
> defend their border?
Of course. Ever heard of female soldiers????
>Feminist only bark for equal representation in the easy desk job.
Bullshit.
>They do not want these hard, but essential jobs,
More bullshit.
>and therefore are still dependent on men for living.
Only in twisted misogynistic sad mind.
> Sexual division of labour is still common practice
True. Unfortunately. I
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an educated population is one of the best defenses against mindless wars.
Precisely. For instance, my own country (the USA) is in the top 12% [wikipedia.org] in the world in education. When was the last time you saw us start some mindless war?
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Russia doesn't have bad education
Actually they do. Their education when it comes to history and especially social state of European countries is so incorrect that it only can be considered as propaganda.
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few lately meet the original criteria of fostering peace and reducing war,
I think it's been very broad for the last 50 years, and what they also now recognize is nonviolent resistance to tyranny. That's why MLK and Lech Walesa won the prize (among others), and I have a hard time thinking of anyone more deserving.
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What does set her attackers apart is their warped interpretation of a wide spread Semitic monotheistic religion that got polluted by ancient Middle Eastern tribalism.
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The moral of the story is that she has a spine, and you've none.
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What's grotesque is pretending that antiquated ways of treating women have a place in this world. They don't.