The 2014 Nobel peace prize has just been won by Malala Yousafzai alongside Kailash Satyarthi, an Indian children’s rights activist. Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenage education campaigner was shot on school bus in 2012 by a Taliban gunman after coming to prominence for her campaigning for education for girls.
On the afternoon of 9 October 2012, Malala boarded her school bus in the northwest Pakistani district of Swat. A gunman asked for Malala by name, then pointed a Colt 45 at her and fired three shots. One bullet hit the left side of Malala’s forehead, traveled under her skin the length of her face and then into her shoulder.
In the days immediately following the attack, she remained unconscious and in critical condition, but later her condition improved enough for her to be sent to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, England for intensive rehabilitation. On 12 October, a group of 50 Islamic clerics in Pakistan issued a fatwa against those who tried to kill her, but the Taliban reiterated its intent to kill Yousafzai and her father.
The two were named winner of the £690,000 (8m kronor or $1.11m) prize by the chairman of the Nobel committee – Norway’s former prime minister Thorbjoern Jagland this morning. She won for what the Nobel committee called her “heroic struggle” for girls’ right to an education. She is the youngest ever winner of the prize.
In a statement, the Nobel committee said: “Despite her youth, Malala Yousafzai has already fought for several years for the right of girls to education, and has shown by example that children and young people, too, can contribute to improving their own situations.
“This she has done under the most dangerous circumstances. Through her heroic struggle she has become a leading spokesperson for girls’ rights to education.”
Satyarthi, the Nobel committee said, had maintained the tradition of Mahatma Gandhi and headed various forms of peaceful protests.
“Showing great personal courage, Kailash Satyarthi, maintaining Gandhi’s tradition, has headed various forms of protests and demonstrations, all peaceful, focusing on the grave exploitation of children for financial gain,” the committee said. “He has also contributed to the development of important international conventions on children’s rights.” The Nobel committee said it “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”.
There were a record 278 nominations this year, 19 more than ever before – including US whistleblowers Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and Pope Francis. Also on the list of nominees was an anti-war clause in the Japanese constitution and the International Space Station Partnership.
Previous choices include illustrious names such as Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi, and Martin Luther King – and, controversially, Barack Obama in 2009.
Nobel, a wealthy Swedish industrialist who invented dynamite, provided few directions for how to select winners, except that the prize committees should reward those who “have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind”.
