Kailash Satyarthi
Kailash Satyarthi
Kailash Satyarthi is an Indian children's rights and education advocate and an activist against child labour. He founded the Bachpan Bachao Andolanin 1980 and has acted to protect the rights of more than 83,000 children from 144 countries. It is largely because of Satyarthi's work and activism that the International Labour Organization adopted Convention No. 182 on the worst forms of child labour, which is now a principal guideline for governments around the world...
NationalityIndian
ProfessionCivil Rights Leader
Date of Birth11 January 1954
CountryIndia
We talk of globalization, and how much money is needed for the education of children in the world, their liberation and rehabilitation just $9 billion which is four days of military expense. Just four days. Nine billion dollars is nothing. But what Americans spent on ice cream just 20 percent of this. One fifth of what you spend on ice creams could bring the children out of the clutches of their masters and put them to school.
During the past few years North East India has emerged as one of the biggest destinations for child trafficking.
My philosophy is that I am a friend of the children. I don't think anyone should see them as pitiable subjects or charity. That is old people's rhetoric. People often relate childish behaviour to stupidity or foolishness. This mindset needs to change. I want to level the playing field where I can learn from the children. Something I can learn from children is transparency. They are innocent, straightforward, and have no biases. I relate children to simplicity and I think that my friendship with children has a much deeper meaning than others.
For centuries, we were taught that anger is bad. Our parents, teachers, priests, everyone taught us how to control and suppress our anger. But I ask: why can't we convert our anger for the larger good of society?
First of all, everyone must acknowledge and feel that child slavery still exists in the world, in its ugliest face and form. And this is an evil, which is crime against humanity, which is intolerable, which is unacceptable and which must go. That sense of recognition must be developed first of all. And secondly there is a need of higher amounts of political will. There is a need of higher amount of corporate engagement, and the engagement of the public towards it. So, everybody has a responsibility to save and protect the children on this planet.
There is no greater violence than to deny the dreams of our children.
I refuse to accept that the world is so poor, when just one week of global spending on armies is enough to bring all of our children into classrooms.
I refuse to accept that the shackles of slavery can ever be stronger than the quest for freedom.
The single aim of my life is that every child is: free to be a child, free to grow and develop, free to eat, sleep, see daylight, free to laugh and cry, free to play, free to learn, free to go to school, and above all, free to dream.
Childhood means simplicity. Look at the world with the child's eye - it is very beautiful.