Updated at 5:55 a.m. ET
Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teen who was attacked by Taliban militants for promoting education for girls, will share the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize with Kailash Satyarthi, an Indian campaigner against exploitation of children.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee says on Nobelprize.org:
"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. He has also contributed to the development of important international conventions on children's rights."Despite her youth, Malala Yousafzay 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."
Yousafzai, 17, defied the Taliban in her town of Mingora in Swat Valley, near the volatile western frontier dividing Pakistan and Afghanistan. In October 2012, Taliban militiamen boarded a school bus she was on, singled her out and shot her in the left side of the head. Two other girls were also wounded in the attack.
Left in critical condition, Yousafzai received an outpouring of international support and was moved her to the U.K. for treatment.
In July 2013, Yousafzai addressed the United Nations, telling delegates that the Taliban "thought that bullets would silence us, but they failed.
"The terrorists thought that they would change my aims and stop my ambitions," she said defiantly, "but nothing changed in my life, except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born."
She is a previous recipient of the Sakharov Prize and was first nominated for the Peace Prize last year. She now lives in Birmingham, England, but the Taliban have threatened to target her again.
Satyarthi, 60, is a long-time activist against child labor and for better education of children in South Asia. In his 20s, he gave up a career as an electrical engineer and "dedicated his life to helping the millions of children in India who are forced into slavery by powerful and corrupt business- and land-owners," PBS writes.
"His original idea was daring and dangerous. He decided to mount raids on factories — factories frequently manned by armed guards — where children and often entire families were held captive as bonded workers.
"After successfully freeing and rehabilitating thousands of children, he went on to build up a global movement against child labor. Today Kailash heads up the Global March Against Child Labor, a conglomeration of 2000 social-purpose organizations and trade unions in 140 countries."
"If we spend money on her, then we have to spend money on her marriage, dowry probably, and then if something goes wrong, then we are always sufferers. So better that that girl is not born," he said, explaining the reasoning of some parents in India.
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