BBC Online :Pakistani education activist Malala Yousafzai and Indian child rights campaigner Kailash Satyarthi have received the Nobel Peace Prize awards.The Nobel committee described both laureates as “champions of peace”.Speaking earlier to the BBC, Yousafzai said she would consider pursuing a career in politics if it was the best way to serve her country.Satyarthi said receiving the prize was “a great opportunity” to further his work against child slavery.Yousafzai and Satyarthi received their awards from the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel committee, in the presence of King Harald V of Norway.They are delivering their Nobel lectures during the award ceremony.In his speech, Satyarthi said he was “representing the sound of silence” and the “millions of those children who are left behind”.He said he had kept an empty chair at the ceremony as a reminder of the children without a voice.”There is no greater violence than to deny the dreams of our children,” he said. “I refuse to accept that the shackles of slavery can ever be stronger than the quest for Contd on page-11- Col-freedom,” he added, to applause. The Nobel committee chairman Thorbjorn Jagland stressed the importance of education, saying: “The road to democracy and freedom is paved with knowledge.”Jagland praised Satyarthi’s work campaigning against child labour, often at great risk to himself.He also lauded Yousafzai’s efforts to promote education despite threats from the Taliban, saying: “Her courage is almost indescribable”.Yousafzai, 17, was shot in the head by Taliban gunmen in October 2012 for campaigning for girls’ education and now lives in the UK. She is the youngest ever recipient of the prize.Yousafzai is accompanied in Norway by a delegation of school girls – including the two classmates shot alongside her by the Taliban, the BBC’s Orla Guerin in Oslo reports.Malala Yousafzai: “If I can serve my country best through politics and through becoming a prime minister, then I would definitely choose that”Through the efforts of Satyarthi, 60, tens of thousands of children have been rescued from hazardous industries.He has endured death threats for his work, and two of his colleagues were killed.
