write a biography on kailash satyarthi

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Kailash Satyarthi holding his medal after being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014.

AP Photo/Cornelius Poppe

To free every child

Harvard Staff Writer

Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi’s long struggle to protect rights of the young

Kailash Satyarthi, the winner of a Nobel Peace Prize for his fight against child labor and exploitation, said his mission as a children’s rights activist began when he himself was a child.

On his first day of school, Satyarthi saw another kid about his age working as a shoeshine boy instead of attending class. It disturbed him so much that one day he gathered the courage to ask the boy’s father, a cobbler, why he didn’t send him to school. The answer left an indelible mark on Satyarthi.

“He told me, ‘You’re born to go to school, and we’re born to work,’” he recalled during a phone call from New York.

“It was a shock for me,” said Satyarthi, who was born into a high-caste Indian family. “I started crying because I didn’t know anything about the caste system and the hierarchies and discrimination associated with it. But I started looking at the world with different eyes, and I began questioning it because it wasn’t right.”

Satyarthi put his feelings into action. At just 11, he collected used books and created a book bank for poor children. The first rescue operation he undertook, with friends and colleagues, was to free a 14-year girl who had been abducted and was about to be sold to a brothel. As an adult he considered creating a charity or an orphanage, but instead founded an organization to defend children’s rights, Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save Childhood Movement), which campaigns to end bonded labor, child labor, and human trafficking, and advocates for education for all children.

In 2014 he was awarded the Nobel along with Malala Yousafzai, the then-teenage Pakistani activist who survived being shot in the head by Taliban assassins, “for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education.”

On Friday, Satyarthi, now 65, will be on campus for a screening of “ The Price of Free ,” a documentary about his life and mission that won the 2018 U.S. Documentary Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. An excerpt will be shown at 4 p.m. at Sanders Theatre at an event hosted by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Faculty of Arts & Sciences . Chan School Dean Michelle Williams, the Angelopoulos Professor in Public Health and International Development, will give introductory remarks. The screening will be followed by a discussion with Satyarthi.

An admirer of Mahatma Gandhi, Satyarthi gave up his career as an electrical engineer and his high-caste name, Sharma, in the 1980s, swapping it for Satyarthi, which means “seeker of truth.” He also started working full time for his cause.

Through his organization, Satyarthi has freed more than 80,000 children from forced labor in dangerous rescue operations. Two members of his group have been killed, one shot and the other beaten to death by criminal gangs connected to companies that use enslaved children as labor. Satyarthi himself has also suffered attacks.

“They want to eliminate me and crush my organization because they feel threatened by our work,” he said. “But they are the ones in danger. They’re getting weaker, and our movement is getting stronger.”

Due to the Save Childhood Movement’s advocacy, in 1986 the Indian government passed the Child Labour Act, which prohibits hiring children younger than 14 years old for hazardous jobs. In 1998, Satyarthi led a global march against child labor across 103 countries, and a year later the International Labour Organization (ILO) adopted Convention No. 182, concerning the prohibition of and immediate action on eliminating the worst forms of child labor.

The work is far from over, said Satyarthi. According to the ILO, 152 million children remain in forced labor around the world.

“We’d like to see universities become strong champions for the cause,” said Satyarthi. “My mission in life is that every child on the earth is free; free to walk to school, free to laugh, free to play. When every child is free to be a child, only then my dream will come true.”

Admission is free but tickets are required. Tickets can be picked up at the Harvard Box Office .

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Profile: Kailash Satyarthi

Activist has freed tens of thousands of Indian children forced into slavery.

Kailash Satyarthi, a prominent child rights activist and the winner of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize, has freed tens of thousands of Indian children forced into slavery by businessmen, land-owners and others.

Born on January 11, 1954, Satyarthi has been at the forefront of the drive against child labour in India where the practice is rife .

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Satyarthi, who was trained as an electrical engineer but gave it up at the age of 26, founded the Bachpan Bachao Andolan or Save the Childhood Movement in 1980.

In a 2010 interview with the Robert F. Kennedy Centre for Justice and Human Rights , he said his social conscience was awoken when he was six and noticed a boy his age on the steps outside the school with his father, cleaning shoes.

Seeing many such children working instead of being educated, he felt an urge as he grew older to solve the problem – launching him on his career of activism.

“I think of it all as a test. This is a moral examination that one has to pass… to stand up against such social evils,” he said.

He began his work by staging raids on manufacturing plants where children and their parents often work as bonded labour.

Under bonded labour, families often borrow money and have to work till the funds can be repaid. But often the money is too much to be paid back from meagre earnings and people are sold and resold.

Bachpan Bachao Andolan is credited to have freed more than 80,000 children from various forms of servitude.

Building on his initial activism, Satyarthi organised the Global March Against Child Labour in the 1990s – dedicated to freeing the millions of children abused worldwide in a form of modern slavery.

“To employ children is illegal and unethical,” Satyarthi said on the Global March Against Child Labour website.”If not now, then when? If not you, then who? If we are able to answer these fundamental questions, then perhaps we can wipe away the blot of human slavery.”

The activist is also founder of RugMark , a widely known international scheme that tags all carpets made in factories that are child-labour free.

He described the plight of children forced into the worst kinds of abusive work in the Kennedy Centre interview.

“If they cry for their parents, they are beaten severely, sometimes hanged upside down from trees and even branded or burned with cigarettes,” he said.

He also spearheads the South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude or SAACS, among other groups, and helps oversee a transition centre in Rajasthan where newly freed labourers learn fresh skills.

He lives modestly and keeps a low profile except for his causes.

The activist, born in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, said he was “delighted” by the Nobel award, according to the Press Trust of India, and described it as “recognition” for the fight for child rights.

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Who is Nobel peace prize winner Kailash Satyarthi?

Kailash Satyarthi was in his nondescript office in a scruffy, traffic-choked neighbourhood in south Delhi when he learned on Twitter that he had won the Nobel peace prize . Minutes later the 60-year-old activist received a call from the Nobel committee.

“He was happy of course, but there were no tears and no shouting or anything like that. He’s a very down to earth man,” said Satyarthi’s son, Bahawan, 35.

The seventh Indian to win the Nobel peace prize , Satyarthi was described on Friday as “little known” in India by the Hindustan Times, a leading local newspaper.

This is not entirely true; the activist is a familiar figure for journalists and campaigners working on child labour matters. Trim, soft-spoken, articulate, passionate and amiable, Satyarthi has kept a low profile.

He worked with Guardian Films on a documentary about modern-day slavery in Assam. In the film, he led a raid to rescue a girl trafficked from a tea estate into domestic slavery in Delhi.

During filming, he explained the dangers of his work. “In my own case I have my broken leg and my broken head and my broken back and my broken shoulder, so different parts of my body have been broken while I was trying to rescue children.

“I lost two of my colleagues – one was shot dead and one was beaten to death. Most of my junior colleagues have been beaten up many, many times. So it is not an easy game.

“It is a challenge definitely and I know that it is a long battle to fight, but slavery is unacceptable, it is a crime against humanity. I’m not talking in legal terms, morally I feel I cannot tolerate the loss of freedom of any single child in my own country so I am a kind of restless person in that sense. We cannot accept this to happen.”

Last week he was on a raid on a factory suspected of using children as cheap labour. In his 34 years as an activist, Satyarthi has freed tens of thousands of young Indians , some just five or six years old, forced into servitude by unscrupulous agents, businessmen, landowners and brothel owners.

Satyarthi has said his commitment to the cause goes back to when he was six and noticed a boy his age on the steps outside the school with his father, cleaning shoes.

“I think of it all as a test. This is a moral examination that one has to pass … to stand up against such social evils,” he said in 2010.

Born in Vidisha, in Madhya Pradesh state, Satyarthi, the son of a police officer, studied electrical engineering at a government college.

His first campaigns involved a football club using membership fees to pay the school fees of needy children, while another project became a book bank in his home town.

In 1980 Satyarthi founded the Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save the Childhood Movement) and began raiding factories, brick kilns and carpet-making workshops where children and their indebted parents often pledge themselves to work for decades in return for a short-term loan.

Frequently the loan remains unpaid back from meagre earnings and people are repeatedly resold.

In the late 1990s, Satyarthi was a lead organiser of the Global March Against Child Labour, aimed at raising consciousness about millions of children abused worldwide in a form of modern slavery. Academics remember him excoriating government officials who claimed at international conferences that the problem did not exist in India.

He also founded RugMark , an international scheme that tags all carpets made in factories certified as child labour-free.

More recently he has launched operations to rescue girls sold into abusive forced marriages and helped turn hundreds of villages into rehabilitation centres to teach trades to abused teenagers.

Relatives said Satyarthi, a married father of two, had been influenced by the thinking of Mahatma Gandhi and other Indian social activists of the 1950s and 60s.

“India has hundreds of problems and millions of solutions,” the Nobel laureate said on Friday.

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Kailash Satyarthi

2014 Nobel Peace Prize-winner for leading a global movement to end child slavery and exploitative child labour practices.

Kailash Satyarthi was born on 11th January 1954 in Vidisha, India. As a child, he noticed that some children did not go to school like he did and instead worked under harsh conditions to earn money. Disturbed by these inequalities, he asked his classmates to donate textbooks and money to the underprivileged so that they had a chance to study also.

Kailash went on to earn a degree in electrical engineering and began his career as an engineer. But he was still plagued by the injustice of children who were forced to work as bonded labourers. In 1980, he quit his job and started a journal called ‘The Struggle Shall Continue ’ to create awareness about the problem of child labour. After learning about local factories where children were forcibly kept and made to work long hours in brutal conditions, he helped conduct raids to rescue children and their parents who were held as bonded labourers. This was dangerous work and he was often beaten up and had his life threatened.

Kailash realised that the work did not end with the rescue of the children. These children needed to be rehabilitated so that they could live normal lives. So, he formed the organisation, Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save the Children Movement), dedicated to eradicating human trafficking and bonded child labour. Bachpan Bachao Andolan was the first organisation of its kind in India which worked to educate the public about child labour, rescue the children from the factories, and provide them with education and basic skills. The success of the BBA led to the creation of the South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude in 1989, which has liberated thousands of child labourers working in different industries.

In 1998, Kailash led the Global March against child labour to motivate individuals and organisations around the world to do their part in the fight against child labour. From this grew consortiums like Goodweave, a voluntary labelling initiative to ensure that rugs have not been produced with child labour. In 2014, Kailash was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for protecting the rights of more than 85,000 children from 144 countries.

He has been a member of the PeaceJam Foundation since 2017.

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Kailash Satyarthi’s Nobel Peace Prize Caps Decades of Fighting Child Slavery in India

Satyarthi on winning nobel peace prize, the indian child rights activist kailash satyarthi speaks after receiving the nobel peace prize for his fight against the oppression of children..

By Ellen Barry

• Oct. 10, 2014

NEW DELHI — Many years have passed, but a police chief named Amitabh Thakur can remember the precise moment when he first set eyes on Kailash Satyarthi, who won the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.

Mr. Satyarthi was lying on the ground, bleeding profusely from the head, while a group of men converged on him with bats and iron rods. They worked for the Great Roman Circus, which was illegally employing teenagers trafficked from Nepal as dancing girls. Mr. Satyarthi, a Gandhian activist in a simple white cotton tunic, had come to free them.

As he approached the scene, the chief realized he was interrupting a savage beating.

“I remember that when I reached this man, he was rather composed,” Mr. Thakur said. “I was very impressed, for the simple reason that a man was putting his life in danger for a noble cause.”

Mr. Satyarthi is not an international celebrity like 17-year-old Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan, with whom he is sharing the prize. Instead, he has labored for three decades to shave away at the numbingly huge problem of child slavery in India, using undercover operatives and camera crews to find the airless workrooms and mine shafts where children were being kept.

The circus raid was a reminder of the factors that converge in favor of employers using bonded labor in India: caste differences, religious differences, political and economic leverage. About 28 million children ages 6 to 14 are working in India, according to Unicef, the United Nations children’s agency. Mr. Satyarthi’s organization, called Bachpan Bachao Andolan, or Save the Children Mission, is credited with freeing some 70,000 of them. In 1994, he started Rugmark, now GoodWeave International, in which rugs are certified to have been made without child labor.

Asked to explain the origin of his life’s work, Mr. Satyarthi sometimes tells a story from his childhood, when he proudly entered a schoolyard for the first time and noticed a boy his own age, the son of a cobbler, gazing at him from outside the gate. He screwed up his courage and approached the cobbler, asking why his son did not go to school.

“He replied, ‘Look, sir, we are the people who are born to work,’ ” he said. “I was so disturbed. Why do we people have so many dreams, and they have none? This has gone so deep to my heart, and that is when I started working with poor children. It was a nonissue in my country.”

Mr. Satyarthi is the eighth Indian to win a Nobel, and only the second — after Mother Teresa — to win the Peace Prize.

As India undergoes swift economic expansion, a growing middle class has created a surging demand for domestic workers, jobs often filled by children. There is virtually no enforcement of labor laws, and newspapers regularly carry accounts of children sold into service and confined in horrific conditions, paid nothing and barely fed. They are sought-after employees, and in a population struggling with dire poverty, there is little will to stamp out the practice.

Simon Steyne, a longtime friend and colleague of Mr. Satyarthi’s, said reducing child labor was ultimately the responsibility of governments and lawmakers. “I don’t think Kailash would say, ‘We are going to go out and rescue the other 168 million,’ ” Mr. Steyne said. But he added that his friend was driven by a sense of moral urgency and a ground-level network of informants who continually provide reports of exploitation.

“If there is intelligence that there are children being physically trafficked on a train, they will get raid and rescue workers together at a station,” said Mr. Steyne, an official at the International Labor Organization. “And when the train stops, they’ll board the train and rescue the children.”

Born about six and a half years after India won independence, Mr. Satyarthi, 60, was so deeply impressed with Gandhi’s teachings that, as a teenager, he invited a group of high-caste local bigwigs to a meal prepared by low-caste “untouchables”; the invited guests boycotted the event and then shunned his family. Deeply upset, the boy dropped his Brahmin family name in favor of Satyarthi, which means “seeker of truth,” according to an account on his website.

A few years later, Mr. Satyarthi was studying engineering at college when Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency, cracking down on civil liberties and suspending elections. Already a Marxist, he mobilized students against the government and spent much of the period avoiding arrest warrants, said Prabhat Kumar, a longtime friend and fellow activist.

Mr. Satyarthi ultimately came to prominence by organizing raids to free child laborers. Undercover operatives posing as buyers or laborers would persuade businesspeople to reveal the location of child workers.

A2002 documentary for PBS followed Mr. Satyarthi to a quarry at 5 a.m., where he found children and adult workers living in brick shacks. Some of the children cry as he hugs them. The workers lift cloth parcels with their belongings onto their heads, and he ushers 52 people onto a truck to take them away.

“If they are caught, any kind of torture is meted out to them,” he tells the camera. “They are beaten up severely, burned with cigarettes, sometimes tied down on trees and beaten with stones.” He added, “It’s very difficult for them to realize or internalize freedom.”

Many of the children were temporarily resettled at an ashram run by Bachpan Bachao Andolan before returning to their villages.

Among those who celebrated on Friday was Mohammad Manan Ansari, who began working at a mica mine at 6, digging ore that would sell for 5 to 20 cents a pound. Mr. Ansari, now a college student in his late teens, recalled watching as a small friend was crushed by falling rocks in one of the mine’s tunnels. He said he would be grateful to Mr. Satyarthi for the rest of his life.

“My happiest moment was when Bachpan Bachao Andolan workers came and saved me,” he said. “Now Kailash’s Nobel is the second happiest moment of my life. I can’t explain my joy in my own words.”

Because of an editing error, an article on Saturday about Kailash Satyarthi, an Indian child rights advocate who shared the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday with Malala Yousafzai, a young Pakistani activist, misstated, in some editions, the number of years after India’s independence that Mr. Satyarthi was born. It was about six and a half years, not five and a half. (India won independence from Britain in 1947; Mr. Satyarthi was born in 1954.)

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Nida Najar contributed reporting.

Wallenberg Legacy, University of Michigan

2002, Kailash Satyarthi

One person can make a difference—in any culture, at any time. More than twenty years ago a young engineer gave up a lucrative career and dedicated himself to reclaiming the lives of South Asia’s most vulnerable population: the millions of children who are exploited and abused in a form of modern-day slavery.

Kailash Satyarthi was challenged at an early age by the world’s economic inequities, and the grotesque wrongs they engender. On his first day of school when he was barely 6 years old, Satyarthi noticed a boy about his age on the steps outside the school with his father, cleaning and repairing shoes, and not entering the classroom like everyone else. He saw this every morning. It was a common sight in the central Indian town of Vidisha, but facing it daily left Satyarthi feeling humiliated, he said. One day Satyarthi gathered up the courage to ask the cobbler why it was so. The cobbler replied: “My father was a cobbler and my grandfather before him. We were born to work, and so was my son.”

Satyarthi was left unsatisfied by that explanation, and by others offered by his parents, teacher and headmaster. “It was very difficult for me to understand,” he said. “I used to see that kid every day, and I was unable to solve the problem.” By the time he was 11, Satyarthi had begun urging other boys and girls to collect used textbooks and money to give to families who could not afford tuition for their children. It was the beginning of a life of activism.

Satyarthi went on to study engineering, but did not last more than a year in that vocation after he graduated from college in Bhopal. It was 1980 and he had started a journal called The Struggle Shall Continue, when one day an old man staggered into the journal’s office with a horrifying story of children working in a brick factory, never seeing the light of day. “I decided right then to stop talking about the problem and go to the victims, and get them out of there,” he said. In the effort to save the children that day, Satyarthi and those with him were beaten by police, but the children eventually were released with the help of the courts. 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.

Typically bonding occurs when a desperate family borrows needed funds, often as little as thirty-five dollars, and is forced to hand over a child as surety until the funds can be repaid. Frequently the money can never be repaid and the child is sold and resold to different masters. Bonded laborers work in the diamond, stone-cutting and manufacturing industries and especially in carpet making where the children hand knit rugs that are sold in markets around the world, including the United States.

Satyarthi has worked relentlessly to free bonded children, to rehabilitate them with vocational training and education and marshal the force of public opinion against child labor. His efforts have taken many different forms, some of them on an international scale. For example, in 1998 he organized the Global March Against Child Labor, bringing representatives from more than ten thousand non-governmental organizations together to pressure governments, manufacturers, and importers to stop illegal and unethical labor practices.

Satyarthi’s courage and persistence have resulted in the liberation of more than 60,000 children in South Asia and beyond. From the journal office in Delhi, to founding the South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude, to leading the Global March Against Child Labor, Satyarthi said he has dedicated himself to reclaiming the lives of the world’s most vulnerable population: the millions of children who are exploited and abused in a form of modern-day slavery. “Children are sold by destitute parents into bonded labor,” Satyarthi said. “The children are then often re-sold into prostitution or, more recently, as forced organ donors.” He said he wants to give them a childhood, and to give them the tools they need to overcome poverty and abuse through education and validation as human beings.

Satyarthi continues to risk his life every day, and has received constant death threats from those opposed to his work. The threats are dire, for two of Satyarthi’s colleagues have been murdered and in 2004 Satyarthi was violently assaulted during his group’s effort to free Nepalese girls from forced labor as circus workers. Satyarthi wrote to supporters afterward, “I have always taken such incidents as a big challenge. The fight against human slavery and trafficking is no mere charity. It is a tireless struggle….They can kill our body, but we will emerge again like the phoenix.”

Published 9 December 2014 by Yasin Emanee

Kailash Satyarthi: The Saviour of Childhood

Discover the story of the Nobel Peace Prize winner and 30-year-veteran in the fight for children’s rights.

Childhood is supposed to be the most intense formative part of our lives. This is the part when we take in experiences and education from the world so that when we grow up, we can impart them to our next generation in an even more refined form. So naturally, when the process of nurturing a child in the proper way is hampered, it leads not only to the degradation of the quality of childhood but the entire life of that person, and all other lives that could have been influenced positively by him or her.

The Nobel Peace prize for this year has gone, (jointly with Malala Yousafzai) to Mr. Kailash Satyarthi , a man trained as an electrical engineer, yet whose self-made mission in life has lead him to save more than 80,000 children from losing their childhood. In a country which, according to UNICEF , has the highest number of under-14 labours, and child labour is rampant in most of the unorganised sector industry, such an act stands out as an impact second to none. While his work has been celebrated to wide acclaim after he was awarded the Nobel Prize, his work was already recognised by many organisations worldwide, including The Aachener International Peace Award (Germany) in 1994.

Mr. Satyarthi’s work runs mainly through his start up, the Bachpan Bachao Andolan , (which translates to Save the Childhood Movement) which envisions “ to create a child friendly society, where all children are free from exploitation and receive free and quality education ” and seeks “ a holistic solution to eliminate the crime of child labour ”. It operates by organising public demonstrations and trying to involve the top leadership of the country with its mission and has acted as an umbrella organisation for hundreds of civil organisations with similar missions, when it formed the South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude (SACCS) in 1989. In what now seems a successful social experiment, the BBA has been trying to organise forums linking diverse areas of national and social interest to the elimination of child labour, like parliamentary, religious and trade union forums against child labour.

Also recognised now is the unique initiative of Children Friendly Villages , designed to eliminate child labour from the rural populace, which constitutes more than 800 million of the billion plus Indian population by empowering the affected groups and educating the local village administration of issues related to child labour and education. His organisation encourages the formation of children’s parliaments in participating villages (called “bal panchayat”), where children can voice their concerns. They will not only be heard by the local village council, but the young representatives also go from door to door to ensure higher school attendance rates – of girls as well as boys. This grassroots approach has proven to be very effective in remote areas. Additionally, it has started the first ever social labelling of child-labour-free industrial production when it started its label of “ Rugmark” (Goodweave International) , as a measure to bring down child labour in the carpet industry of India.

In 1998, Mr. Satyarthi started the Global March against Child Labour , which aims to achieve its objectives by the “ Triangular Paradigm ” of Elimination of Child Labour, Education for All and Poverty Alleviation. In fact, this movement resulted in the fastest ratified convention in the history of the International Labour Organisation which resulted in the unanimous adaptation of Regulations against the Worst Forms of Child Labour , now ratified by 179 countries.

“I am quite hopeful that this will help in giving greater visibility to the cause of children who are the most neglected and most deprived, and that this will also inspire the individuals, activists, governments, business houses and [corporations] to work hand-in-hand to fight it out,” he said after receiving the award.

Changes in individual perceptions will come a long way in helping this cause further. Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting 2014 participants Dhanya Nambiar and Mohanish Borana, both research scholars who grew up in India witnessing the scenes first hand like millions of others, reckon that poverty and an apathetic outlook are what drives this social disease. Dhanya remembers when she and her friends had approached some activists about children working in a canteen of their university, they were told that rehabilitation was the big challenge and that in fact, the children would be better off working in a campus rather than being thrown out to survive in their own, where they might even face horrors like sexual exploitation and forced slavery. Mohanish is of the opinion that “every time we see a child working in an eatery and order, “ Chotu, chaai lana jara! ” (Boy, get me a cup of tea!), something one is very likely to hear in practically all parts of India, even where educated people form the corpus of the crowd, is a sign of our ignorance”. Change will follow only when we can get to the root of this mindset and reset it within ourselves.

In 1980, Kailash Satyarthi had started with one determined soul to recruit a group of activists to lead his first rescue mission in a stone quarry in Faridabad, India. Thirty four years on, one of those he rescued, Laxman Singh , now serves as the treasurer of the BBA and is among the many whose lives have changed permanently for the better on that day. The cycle of goodness is self-sustaining, and to become a part of it is a choice open to every one of us.

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Interview | Kailash Satyarthi – “It’s a journey we traversed from slavery to freedom”

At the klf, nobel peace laureate kailash satyarthi spoke about why he left a lucrative engineering career in the 1970s to become a social activist, you were trained as an engineer but you chose to become a social activist, who worked with children. what motivated you to take this step.

Right from my childhood, I was passionate about humanitarian causes. When I was a student — some 60 years ago, my parents wanted me to become an engineer. I belong to a modest family where nobody had studied engineering or medicine. I was good at mathematics and science, so I secured admission. But back in the early 1970s, there were few colleges and seats; it was very difficult to pursue engineering. After completing the course, for over a year-and-a-half, I taught in a university before giving up my career. Because I was reminded of that very first day in school when I was about five years old. Just outside my school gate, I saw a cobbler boy, my age, maybe younger. I was stunned or rather disappointed. I asked my teachers and family members, why this boy was not with the rest of us in the classroom. Everybody offered a similar response. They said it wasn’t uncommon for poor children to work and support their families. One day, I gathered all my courage and went up to this boy. Beneath an open sky, this boy, who was rather shy, was sitting alongside his father, who immediately got up with folded hands. In Hindi, he said that he never imagined working any other job. They have been cobblers for generations. With utter misery and helplessness in his eyes, he further added that only people like me are destined to go to school.

This made me cry. At that age, I wasn’t aware of caste hierarchies. Later, of course, I understood everything. Because of my upbringing, I had a different perspective on life, so I started thinking along the lines of what could and should be done. I started with smaller things: Collecting used books from friends and distributing them among the needy, helping them with the access of my teachers and so on. Nothing beyond that. It was unclear to me: the path that lay ahead because these issues weren’t in the limelight. No one was talking about it.

Do you think there was a lack of discourse on children’s rights back then?

Completely. Imagine, we have this book now – Why Didn’t You Come Sooner – because there’s so much information available. Earlier, there wasn’t even a single article on such issues because people thought it was a part of life. They readily accepted the idea that poor children have to work. It was nothing new for them as they had witnessed it for centuries. In fact, even women were considered second-grade citizens. Gender equality debates were beginning to emerge back then. Most countries didn’t even uphold equal voting rights. Such was the situation. In such a scenario, I felt the most neglected and vulnerable were the children, who were left out because they couldn’t even protest or register their dissent, unlike adults.

But then, how to help this situation? Because there’s no path available for you to traverse. There were no NGOs in this regard back then, so I had to create the path that I had imagined. I learnt from my experiences a great deal, and this book, Why Didn’t You Come Sooner, is a result of that. It’s much more than a special book for me because it’s neither an academic effort nor a work of fiction. Each sentence in this book is real and full of feeling. It has what I shared with the children and what they shared with me in return — it’s a journey we traversed from darkness to light, from despair to hope, from untruth to truth, and from slavery to freedom.

I do not believe in conventional charity; it’s a spiritual thing for me. I believe in the oneness of humanity. Believe is not the right word; I feel I’m more inclined towards it because I couldn’t differentiate between these children and me, which is why there’s an undercurrent of compassion and spiritualism in the tonality of this book. And when this happens, there’s no duality, you emerge as one from this journey. This book is not a product of random interviews with children, it has been a lived and shared experience with these children.

How difficult or easy was it to write this book? You’ve had to make the narrative cohesive and accessible to a larger audience. What was it like to write and translate it?

I’ve been writing since I was a kid. From being the editor of magazines in my school and college to starting my own S angharsh Jaari Rahega (The Struggle Will Live On, as mentioned in the book) — a Hindi fortnightly, I’ve comfortably switched my career from an electrical engineer to a journalist. There were no funds though, so whatever I had or whatever I could borrow from my friends, I employed to work on this magazine in which we highlighted the stories of the most marginalised of women and children. I used to write for multiple newspapers both in English and Hindi, too. Also, I was editing a magazine based in Thailand. But it wasn’t a commercial thing.

Was it just to put out the message?

Yes. And to educate the people. I remember it was called the Asian Cultural Forum on Development . Not exactly a magazine but a kind of journal. However, to run this Hindi fortnightly I needed money, so I would present the content in a manner that would attract advertisement opportunities without compromising with what the magazine was intended for, of course. Because that was its uniqueness: it was solely dedicated to the most exploited section of society.

Please share an example of how you were able to make a difference in people’s lives

In the magazine, we had this section at the bottom to encourage people to act after having read the story -- a call to action. Sometime in the 1980s, a gentleman named Wasal Khan knocked on my door. His daughter Sabo, who was about 15 years old, was about to be sold to a brothel. The story is there in the book titled Please Save Me, Bhaiya Ji . While I was listening to Khan, I wondered what I would have done had Sabo been my sister or my daughter. I thought we must be involved. I collected my friends and began a rescue operation. The attempt failed. So the next time, with a few of my lawyer friends, we moved court and sought Sabo’s liberation. Let me tell you, it was the first documented or recorded incident of enslaved children in India or elsewhere in the world being rescued with the help of civilian efforts. One can think of these things as the job of the government and do nothing about it, but I thought it was my path; my goal in life.

Saurabh Sharma is a Delhi-based writer and freelance journalist. They can be found on Instagram/X: @writerly_life.

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The UNESCO Courier

Kailash Satyarthi: Fighting for children’s rights, one step at a time

Interview by Mary de Sousa

Where and how did your impulse to fight for children's rights start?

When I was five. The very first day of my schooling, I saw a boy, around the same age as me, sitting outside the school and looking at my shoes. He had a shoe-polishing box in front of him. I was very disturbed. My first-ever question to the teacher was: why was the boy outside and not inside the school? The teacher said it was very common for poor children to have to work.

One day I asked the boy’s father about this and he said his father and grandfather had also been shoe-shiners. Then he said: “Sir, don’t you know that people like you are born to go to school and people like us are born to work?” That question really stayed with me, but I had no answer as a child.

When I got older, I saved my old schoolbooks and collected my pocket money to pay the fees for poor children. I trained as an electrical engineer, but the feeling that I should do something for these children never left me. I left my job to become truly involved.

What would you say were your first major achievements?

From the very start – when I used to write and print thousands of leaflets to be distributed in the market for our first campaign – I have believed that education and liberation are two sides of the same coin. When I first tried to bring the issue of child labour into the public domain, there was nothing being done about it. India did not have a law against child labour till 1986. I fought for six years for this law and it is still not perfect, so the fight goes on.

When I freed children from slavery and asked for them to attend school, I was humiliated so many times. I was told they are dirty, uncared for, we can’t have them here.

I spoke to legal friends, who explained to me the problem was that India did not have education classed as a human right in its Constitution. It was only in 2001 that a mass campaign led to the 86th Amendment to our Constitution, making education a human right.

Your child labour campaign started in India, but soon became international. How did that happen?

It took two decades before it became a global issue. When I founded the Bachpan Bachao Andolan ( BBA ) in 1980 in India, I discovered that none of the United Nations bodies – the International Labour Organization (ILO), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) – or the World Bank, had any international legal instrument to prevent children from being drawn into labour, trafficking, prostitution and other dangerous occupations.

I began to look at Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh, and realized that they all had similar situations concerning contemporary slavery. In parallel, I started to participate in the Human Rights Commission in Geneva, Switzerland, and decided to work towards an international law against child slavery.

I campaigned in Europe and America and set up a programme in Germany to fight against child labour. As a result, the first ILO International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour was born in 1992, and then UNICEF and the World Bank joined in.

In 1993, BBA initiated the first campaign in the form of a march against child labour in India. Five years later, we launched the 80,000-kilometre Global March Against Child Labour across 103 countries, which lasted for six months.

The crowning achievement of these efforts was undoubtedly the ILO Convention 182 , concerning the Prohibition and Immediate Action for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour. It was unanimously adopted and ratified by 181 countries. This happened in 1999, twenty years after my first leaflets were circulated in India.

Ten years ago, you launched another march in South Asia, to advocate for a regional protocol against forced labour, and more recently, in September 2017, the Bharat Yatra march to end child sexual abuse and trafficking. What made you organize these marches?

Bharat Yatra, a nationwide mobilization covering 11,000 kilometres over 36 days, was a clarion call to “Make India Safe Again for Children”. Child sexual abuse is a growing problem worldwide, but in India it has become a modern epidemic – with young children abused, raped or trafficked on a daily basis.

A child is sold every two minutes and sexually abused every half hour. In most cases, the perpetrators are school bus drivers, teachers, tutors.  While they roam free and fearless, the victims keep quiet out of feelings of shame.

I realized I had been fighting all this time for every child to be in school, but in fact children are not always safe there.

The first thing that has to change is the taboo associated with child abuse. That requires a mass movement, so we used the time-tested strategy of marching. Based on our previous successful experiences, we have tackled the problem of violence against children – this time including child marriage and exploitation, which remain huge obstacles to education.

How successful was this journey and what will happen now that awareness has been raised?

To have 1.4 million people join the Bharat Yatra march was unprecedented, particularly as the topic of child sexual abuse is taboo. Wherever we went, young people from the crowd stood up, even came to the stage, and spoke for the very first time about what was happening to them.

Children may have been given the right to education, but now they must be educated about the rights they possess. We are also pushing for a Safe Schools campaign to be promoted by schools, universities and colleges across India, where the priority will be safety from sexual abuse.

We are now working on a study assessing attitudinal and behavioural change and knowledge-building as a result of the Bharat Yatra campaign, which may be shared internationally. We have already had requests from other countries to run Safe Schools campaigns there.  

During the Bharat Yatra march, you told politicians they should go back to school. What did you mean?

They pledged to visit the schools they had attended, and I told them they should go, not as VIPs (Very Important Persons), but as ordinary fathers and mothers and try to learn more – not just about safety, but about the quality of education, the general school environment, the teachers. Is the school child-friendly? Does it have the midday meal programme? What is school attendance like? So often the education sector is aloof and disconnected, and corruption can mean that in rural areas, teachers don’t turn up and school drop-out rates are high.

By getting politicians to visit schools, many changes can be brought about at the same time. I also asked that female police officers visit schools more often, to build the idea of protection. The government has indicated that there will be a new bill against human trafficking, including child trafficking. The bill will also include education campaigns and programmes to help create awareness on the subject.

You were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 for your “struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education.” Did it change your life?

I always joke that I was handed a medal for peace and all my peace was taken away! I have received about 40,000 invitations and would need to live another 160 years to attend all these events. At the same time, I am very happy to be thought of as the ordinary man’s Nobel laureate. Being directly connected with ordinary people gives me much more confidence in what I am trying to do.

One downside is that I am not able anymore to personally go on child labour rescue operations! My face is so well-known that I am recognized even in the remotest areas. This means there will be a tip-off, and children are removed from the mining area or factory before I get there. In several cases, I have had to be more stealthy and return two or three times to find them. On the positive side, I have access to almost all the heads of UN agencies, prime ministers, presidents, where I can talk directly about policy change.

You have come a long way from your original career as an electrical engineer. Have you found a place for those skills in your work?

My training has proved extremely useful in that it allows me to think in an analytical, rational and structured way. I believe this is why my work against child slavery has a rights-based, rather than a conventional, charity approach. Structural change is much easier to bring about when you are familiar with a structural approach.

What changes in children’s lives have you witnessed since you became an activist?

I know that once we free children from slavery and child marriages, we see a ripple effect. Education brings empowerment, dignity and identity to the most deprived and marginalized people, particularly children and girls. Once they are educated about their rights, and acquire reading and writing skills, they gain tremendous self-confidence.

I have witnessed girls standing up and refusing to be married against their will because they know their rights and can go to the police or to a non-governmental organization (NGO). In the same way, many boys trapped into slave labour, once they know they have rights, are able to make contact with someone who can help.

You have met thousands of children. What have they taught you?

That it is essential to keep the child alive inside oneself. I believe when people are genuine and simple and clear in life, it is because they have not forgotten the importance of being childlike.

What keeps you motivated?

What keeps me motivated? The dreams I can see in children’s eyes.

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Kailash Satyarthi Wiki, Age, Wife, Family, Biography & More

Kailash Satyarthi is an Indian electrical engineer, author, and social activist, who is well-known for advocating for children’s rights in India and abroad. He and the Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai jointly received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014. Satyarthi is also known for leading numerous organisations and movements, including Bachpan Bachao Andolan, the Global March Against Child Labour, and the Global Campaign for Education. In 2021, he became the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDG) Advocate.

Wiki/Biography

Kailash Satyarthi was born as Kailash Sharma on Monday, 11 January 1954 ( age 69 years; as of 2023 ) in Vidisha, Madhya Pradesh, India. His zodiac sign is Capricorn. Kailash completed his schooling at the Government Boys Higher Secondary School in Vidisha, Madhya Pradesh. Thereafter, he enrolled at the Samrat Ashok Technological Institute (SATI), affiliated with Bhopal University (now known as Barkatullah University), in Vidhisha. There, he earned a bachelor’s degree in technology in electrical engineering. He later pursued a post-graduate diploma in engineering and began teaching engineering as a professor. He also earned a diploma (Kovid) in Sanskrit at the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. There, he studied Vedas and Upanishads to understand the history and philosophy of India. [1] The Guardian He, however, left his job to begin social activism.

Physical Appearance

Height (approx.): 5′ 11″

Hair Colour:  Salt and Pepper

Eye Colour:  Dark Brown

Kailash Satyarthi with the President of Singapore

Family & Caste

Kailash Satyarthi belongs to a middle-class Brahmin family in Madhya Pradesh. [2] Kailash Satyarthi Children’s Foundation

Parents & Siblings

His father, Ramprasad Sharma, served in the Madhya Pradesh police as a constable. His mother’s name is Chironji Sharma. He has an elder brother.

A photo of his mother

Wife & Children

His wife, Sumedha Kailash, works with him as a social activist. The couple got married on 8 October 1977 in New Delhi.

A photo of Satyarthi with Sumedha Kailash

He has two kids, a son named Bhuwan Ribhu, and a daughter named Asmita Kailash. Both his kids are social activists and work with him.

A photo of Asmita taken with her father Kailash

A photo of Bhuwan Ribhu

Relationships/Affairs

Before getting married to each other, Kailash and Sumedha dated each other. Kailash initially met Sumedha in Delhi, where she worked as the co-editor of Jangyan, an Arya Samaj magazine. They dated for nearly a year before Sumedha’s parents proposed marriage to Kailash’s parents in Vidisha. However, Sumedha’s family was unimpressed with Kailash’s local reputation due to his social activism. Despite her family’s objections, Sumedha insisted on marrying him. [3] The Economic Times

Kailash with Sumedha

Religion/Religious Views

He follows Hinduism. In an interview, Satyarthi said he was not religious and did not visit temples. He further said that he worshipped children, whom he thought were the true faces of gods. He talked about it, in an interview, and said,

I am not a religious person. I’ve not gone to a temple or mosque in the last 40 years. I don’t worship in temples because i worship children — by giving them freedom and childhood. They are the true faces of God and that is my strength.” [4] The Times of India

Signature/Autograph

Signature of Kailash Satyarthi

Social Activism

Child’s rights activism, early beginning.

Kailash Satyarthi began advocating for the rights of poor children when he was in Class 5. In an interview, Kailash said that he started questioning the difference between his and other children’s lives after he saw a poor cobbler forcing his son to work as he was unable to fund his son’s education. Motivated to do something for the poor kids, he later formed a group of like-minded students in his class and began collecting study materials, such as books, to distribute them among the poor children. He was able to collect over 2,000 books and managed to distribute the books to needy students with the help of his school’s headmaster. Later, the idea of collecting books and distributing them gained immense popularity in Vidisha, and it was adopted by many schools, which eventually led to the establishment of a book bank in the city, where poor students could visit and read books. It was during the 1960s and the 1970s that Kailash was influenced by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s ideals of “Ahimsa” (non-violence). He played a pivotal role in the drafting and implementation of the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act in 1986. Satyarthi introduced the idea of the ‘Triangular Paradigm’ in global discussions on policies. This concept highlights the interconnection between child labour, illiteracy, and poverty.

Satyarthi addressing a group of people during a rally

Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA)

In 1980, he started Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA), an organisation aimed at advocating for and protecting the rights of children. It became one of the first organisations in India to be established to protect kids from child labour and trafficking.

After establishing BBA, he went to Punjab, where he rescued many children working in mining quarries as well as in brick kilns. Thereafter, he went to Bihar, where he organised the National Level Chaupal on Bonded Labour at Daltonganj, Palamu. In December 1985, he rescued children working as miners in Uttar Pradesh. He even managed to secure a compensation of Rs. 6,000 for the rescued children from the state government.

Kailash organising a march with kids from Uttar Pradesh

In 1996, he came up with the concept of the Global March Against Child Labour in New Delhi.

Kailash leading the Global March Against Child Labour

In 1997, he organised the first-ever National Bal Sansad and Bal Adalat in New Delhi. The event was attended by more than 20,000 people. On 17 January 1998, he organised a global march in which he covered 80,000 kilometres across 103 countries with more than 7.2 million participants. The march ended at the International Labour Office (ILO) in Geneva on 1 June 1998. It led to the implementation of the ILO Convention 182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labor, making it the only universally accepted convention in the ILO’s history.

A photo of Satyarthi with Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee

The global march led to the creation of the South Asian March Against Child Trafficking for Forced Labour in 2007. It led the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) to include child trafficking as a part of its manifesto. In 2009, the Supreme Court established the All India Legal Aid Cell on Child Rights under the National Legal Services Authority in India (NALSA) with BBA. In 2001, he led the Shiksha Yatra, a march aimed at raising awareness about children’s right to education. The Yatra paved the way for the implementation of the 86th Amendment Act, which made the Right to Education a fundamental right.

Kailash Satyarthi leading the Siksha Yatra

Bachpan Bachao Andolan published a research report titled “Missing Children of India” on 8 December 2011. Through BBA, he has organised numerous demonstrations against child abuse and has also involved influential personalities in the cause. BBA also works with the Indian government and various law enforcement agencies in rescuing children, and as of 2023, the organisation has rescued more than 126k children worldwide.

Kailash with a group of kids

The organisation not only focuses on rescuing the children, but it also emphasizes the children’s rehabilitation as well as their integration into society. The rescued kids are taken to ashrams, like Mukti Ashram on the outskirts of Delhi and Bal Ashram in Virat Nagar, Rajasthan. Mukti Ashram is a place for children rescued from Delhi and nearby areas. There, the kids receive medical attention, food, clothes, and shelter until their parents or family members arrive to take custody. However, those kids who do not have a family stay at Bal Ashram, where they are given education to help them make money to sustain themselves when they grow up.

A photo of the main gate of Mukti Ashram

South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude (SACCS)

In 1989, he founded the South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude (SACCS) in New Delhi to combat child trafficking in South Asian countries. It is a branch of the BBA.

A photo of Kailash Satyarthi taken during the first-ever meeting of the SACCS in 1989

GoodWeave International

Satyarthi established GoodWeave International (formerly known as Rugmark) in 1994. It’s a group of non-profit organizations working together to stop kids from working in rug making. They have a program where companies can get a special logo if they prove that their products are not made by children. Rugmark initiated numerous campaigns aimed at raising user awareness amongst consumers in the US and the European Union (EU) to inform them about the use of child labour in the day-to-day products that they use. According to sources, Kailash Satyarthi introduced the social accountability concept at a time when the term Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) was not formulated. In 2012, he and the Government of Germany demanded the International Labour Organisation (ILO) to make laws aimed at eliminating child labour and abuse. This led to the formulation of the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC).

Kailash during the launch of Rugmark

Global Campaign for Education (GCE)

GCE is an international initiative started by Satyarthi in 1999. The initiative aims at bringing together various NGOs advocating for children’s rights as well as education for them. The initiative includes organisations such as ActionAid, Oxfam International, and Education International. As of 2023, the initiative is active in more than 80 countries.

A photo of Satyarthi taken while he was giving a speech during the Global Campaign for Education

Kailash Satyarthi Children’s Foundation (KSCF)

KSCF was founded in 2004 in India. Later, KSCF launched several initiatives such as the Bal Mitra Gram (BMG) aimed at promoting a friendly atmosphere for children to grow up in villages and the Bal Mitra Mandal (BMM) aimed at creating a child-friendly atmosphere in the slums of India. KSCF has also started many institutes such as Satayrthi Global Policy Institute For Children (SGPIC) and Under Tactical Response Against Child Cyber Exploitation (TRACE). The foundation has also assisted the Government of Maharashtra in upgrading its technology to ensure speedy delivery of justice to the victimised children as well as to stop child abuse in the state.

The Child Marriage Free India event organised by Kailash Satyarthi Children’s Foundation

The organisation is also functioning in the United States of America (USA). In 2016, the foundation launched the 100 million campaign. The campaign aimed to enrol 100 million people across the globe to help 100 million marginalised children. The campaign operated with the assistance of global organisations including the Global Students Forum (GSF), the All-Africa Students Union (AASU), the European Students’ Union (ESU), the Organising Bureau of European School Student Unions (OBESSU), the Commonwealth Students Association (CSA), Education International, and the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU).

Students from Delhi during the 100 Million Campaign

On 11 September 2017, Satyarthi, through KSCF, initiated the Bharat Yatra campaign from Kanyakumari. The campaign intended to raise awareness about children’s rights and how to protect them from abuse. The campaign covered over 12,000 kilometres across 22 states and Union Territories and was joined by more than 5,000 NGOs. Over 1.2 million people marched for 35 days, leading to the implementation of the 2018 Criminal Law Amendment Act, which imposed harsh penalties for child rape. Moreover, the Yatra led to the passage of the Anti-Human Trafficking Bill in the 16th Lok Sabha.

Kailash Satyarthi talking to the media during the Bharat Yatra in 2017

In October 2018, the Government of Jharkhand and the KSCF signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to deal with the problem of children working in the mica mining quarries in the state.

Kailash Satyarthi with the CM of Jharkhand during the signing of the MOU

Other Activism

After joining the Samrat Ashok Technological Institute (SATI), he got involved with the student unions in the college and began writing articles for a Delhi-based Arya Samaj magazine titled Jangyan. In college, he organised several events aimed at mixing the marginalised communities such as the Dalit community with the upper caste communities. He received a lot of criticism from the influential figures of the society, especially the priests, for doing so. In an interview, he talked about an incident in which he was boycotted by his family and society for organising an event for the Dalit community in which he ate the food that was prepared by them. He further claimed that he had invited many politicians and well-known figures to attend the event. Initially, they accepted the invite; however, no one came to the event. After the event, many local priests said that Kailash had become impure by eating food made by the Dalits. The priests asked the family either to disown him or to relocate. He talked about it, in an interview, and said,

The priests were shocked and they asked my family members to disown me and shift me to a separate room in the backyard or face ostracisation from the community. I was instructed not to enter the house and was given separate utensils. It was further decided that my food would be sent to the small room itself. Who are these people to throw me out of the community? I do not want to be associated with a hypocrite community in the first place.”

In 1984, after the anti-Sikh riots in India, Kailash began advocating for justice for the victims of the Sikh community who were affected by the riots. He established the Nagrik Ekta Manch to do so. Satyarthi also assisted the Sikhs by visiting relief camps set up by the Indian government as well as the international communities to take an assessment of the situation. Reportedly, Satyarthi saved the lives of many Sikhs by giving them shelter in his house during the 1984 riots. Despite receiving death threats, he organised many candle marches and organised exhibitions with photos of the victims to seek justice for them.

Kailash Satyarthi leading a march during his younger days

Apart from indulging in social activism. Satyarthi is also known to have penned many books, including Will for Children (2017), Because Words Matter (2017), The Light of the Same Sun (2017), Badlav Ke Bol (2018), Every Child Matters (2018), and Covid-19 : Sabhyata Ka Sankat Aur Samadhan (2021), and The Book of Compassion (2024).

Controversy

Accused of misappropriation of funds.

In 1997, several trustees of the Mukti Pratishthan Trust (MPT), a charitable trust, filed a complaint against Kailash Satyarthi and Sumedha Kailash in a Delhi court, accusing them of indulging in corruption and malpractices while serving in the trust. The complaint also alleged that the couple used money received in charity by the trust for their personal use like going on foreign trips and buying expensive valuables. [5] The New Indian Express In return, Kailash and Sumedha filed litigation in the court, denying the allegations and urging the court to dismiss the case. The couple also claimed that false charges were framed by the MPT on the instructions of their mentor Swami Agnivesh, a political figure and Arya Samaj leader, for his gains. In 2015, the court received information that the trust had lost the record of the accounts to support their claims. [6] India Today

Awards, Honours, Achievements

• The Aachen Peace Prize by the Government of Germany (1994)
• The Trumpeter Award by the National Consumers League (1995)
• Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award by the RFK Human Rights Foundation (1995)
• Golden Flag Award (Netherlands) (1998)
• De Gouden Wimpel Award (Netherlands) (1998)
• La Hospitalet Award (Spain) (1999)

Kailash receiving the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Award in Germany in 1999

• Wallenberg Medal by the University of Michigan (2002)
• Freedom Award (USA) (2006)
• Included in the US State Department’s list of Heroes Acting to End Modern Day Slavery (2007)
• Gold Medal by the Italian Senate (2007)
• Alfonso Comin International Award by the Alfonso Comín Foundation (Spain) (2008)

Kailash being felicitated with the Defenders of Democracy Award

Kailash with Malala Yousafzai holding his Nobel Peace Price that he won in 2014

• Honorary Doctor of Philosophy Degree by Alliance University (2014)
• Honoris Causa in Science by Amity University, Gurgaon (2015)

Kailash Satyarthi receiving the Humanitarian of The Year Award

• Member-Fellow of the Australian Institute of Management (2016)

Kailash receiving an honourary doctorate from Lynchburg College, Virginia in 2016

• Doctor of Law (LLD) by the West Bengal University of Juridical Sciences (2016)

President Pranab Mukherjee presenting the Doctor of Science (Honoris Causa) to Kailash Satyarthi at the 64th Convocation of Panjab University

Kailash Satyarthi receiving the P.C. Chandra Puraskaar in 2017

Guinness World Records certificate for Largest Child Safeguarding Lesson

• Doctor Honoris Causa by the EL Rector Magnífico de la Universidad Pablo de Olavide (Spain) (2017)
• Doctor Honoris Causa in Science by Amity University (2018)
• The Santokbaa Humanitarian Award by Shree Ramkrishna Knowledge Foundation (SRKKF) (2018)

Kailash with his Lifetime Achievement Award by Wockhardt

• The Mother Teresa Memorial Award for Social Justice (2019)

A photo of Kailash taken while he was receiving an honourary doctorate at Universidad Internacional de La Rioja

Kailash Satyarthi receiving the Dr. Bhai Mohan Singh trophy

Satyarthi receiving the Rotary Award of Honor in Houston, Texas

Bike Collection

He owns a Royal Enfield.

Kailash riding his Royal Enfield with Sumedha

Facts/Trivia

• Kailash is a keen writer and developed an interest in writing during childhood. He has written numerous poems under the title Chalo Hawaon Ka Rukh Moden. He also wrote the theme song “Hum Nikal Pade Hain” for the 1998 Global March Against Child Labour.
• He follows a vegetarian diet. [7] Kailash Satyarthi Children’s Foundation

There is one dish that my wife really appreciates – stuffed tomatoes. I had made this dish for Sumedha Ji before we got married; I think it helped in influencing her decision to get married to me.”

My ‘punishment’ was being decided – whether I would be expelled from my caste, or I would be sent to Haridwar for ‘purification’. This made me even more furious. It was decided that I would be given a separate room and I would be treated like an untouchable. I stayed there for many years in that room, and my mom used to cry while giving me food from a distance. I gathered strength with a lot of difficulty. I then decided that who are they to expel me? I set myself free from the shackles of caste and changed my surname.”

• Even though Kailash Satyarthi likes to ride bikes, he has been advised by the doctors to avoid bike riding due to injuries he sustained in his spinal cord after being attacked several times by the mafias due to social activism.
• For his social activism, Satyarthi has received many death threats. In the early 1980s, he was attacked and wounded by the mafia in Uttar Pradesh (UP). His friends were also killed, and his house was ransacked and set on fire.
• In 1981, he started a social activism magazine titled Sangharsh Jari Rahega. The magazine aimed to influence as many people as possible to join his cause and advocate for children’s rights.

I helped start Pakistan’s anti-child labour movement, when Pakistan’s army wanted to kill me outside Lahore in 1987. I was addressing brick-kiln workers there when soldiers came and put a dozen guns on my head. I smiled and said, please kill me but only after 10-15 minutes when I’ve finished talking to these people.”

A photo of Kailash with the freed Nepalese girls who were working forcefully in the circus in UP

• He appeared in the 2005 PBS series “The New Heroes,” which was presented by the actor Robert Redford.
• In 2007, a short documentary film titled Ropes In Their Hands was produced by BBA. The film was based on the 2004 rescue operation in Uttar Pradesh in which Kailash and his organisation rescued many underaged Nepalese girls from a circus. The film was invited to be screened at the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival (NYIIFVF) in April 2007.
• Queen of Jordan Rania Al Abdullah endorsed his 1-goal campaign during the 2010 FIFA World Cup. The campaign was designed to advocate for children’s rights and sought to mobilize millions of people for the cause.
• In 2011, after Kailash Satyarthi filed a PIL regarding child trafficking in the Supreme Court of India, the court defined the term ‘child trafficking,’ which led to the implementation of the Palermo Protocol, an international agreement. These actions prompted the Indian government to amend Section 370 and Section 370A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) to enhance its effectiveness in combating human trafficking.

When he decided to quit his teaching job at a college in Vidisha, my mother’s family was very unhappy. They were not too happy anyway, because they had eloped and married. His decision to quit gave my maternal parents another reason to disown my mother. But my mother supported him through very difficult times.”

• Satyarthi has served as a member of the board of several NGOs, including the Center for Victims of Torture (CVT), the International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF), and the International Cocoa Organization (ICCO).
• He has received invitations on numerous occasions to address elected representatives of countries such as the United States of America, Germany, and the United Kingdom.
• In 2014, he led the End Child Slavery Week Campaign, which gained appreciation from many leaders.

Kailash presenting his Nobel Peace Prize medal to the President of India

Satyarthi with the UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon

Satyarthi with the participants of the Laureates and Leaders For Children 2016 Summit

• In February 2017, robbers broke into Kailash Satyarthi’s residence in Greater Kailash, New Delhi, and stole his Nobel Peace Prize medal and citation, which he received in 2014. However, the stolen items were later recovered by the Delhi Police.

A photo of Kailash taken in a cowshed

• In September 2017, Kailash Satyarthi was recognized by India Times as one of the 11 Human Rights Activists dedicated to the mission of ensuring a life of dignity for others.
• He was invited to give a speech at the 4th Global Conference on Child Labour held in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 2017.

Kailash with Sumedha in Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC)

It is a recognition of the seriousness of the crisis faced by children today in this world. We have witnessed the first increase in child labour in two decades, even before the pandemic hit a warning sign that we are facing the threat of failing on the promises of Agenda 2030. Peace, justice and sustainability will only be achieved when every child is free, safe, healthy and educated. Every child matters.”

A photo of Kailash taken when he was at the Peace and Sport Middle East Forum in Riyadh

References [+] [−]

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5 Things to Know About Nobel Prize Winner Kailash Satyarthi

Indian activist shares honor with Malala Yousafzai.

— -- Kailash Satyarthi was recognized with the Nobel Peace Prize today for his decades-long fight against child slavery and exploitative child labor.

The India native, 60, shares the honor with Malala Yousafzai, a child activist and international inspiration who was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman two years ago. Both were cited by the Norwegian Nobel Committee "for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education."

Person of the Week: Kailash Satyarthi

Malala yousafzai, kailash satyarthi win nobel peace prize, unbreakable: one girl changing the world.

In a 2004 ABC News profile, Satyarthi said his home and office have been attacked, but he said the danger is worth it.

"If I was not fighting against child labor, I don't know what else I could do. It was always in my heart, I could not live without that," he said at the time.

"It's really a kind of spiritual feeling which is difficult to explain," Satyarthi said. "And the smiles come on the face of the children when they realize that they are free."

Here are five facts about Satyarthi’s career and efforts.

1. He Worked as an Electrical Engineer

At age 26, Satyarthi gave up a career as an electrical engineer to devote himself to protecting children, even raiding factories where workers were held captive.

2. Following Gandhi's Path

He is known for participating in protests and demonstrations – all peaceful, according to the Norwegian Nobel Committee – with a focus on child exploitation.

3. A New Label

He started a program in 1994 called “Rugmark,” now known as GoodWeave International, in which rugs are certified and labeled to be child-labor free.

4. Meaningful Movement

A campaign founded by Satyarthi and his friends in 1980, Bachpan Bachao Andoloan, can be translated as “Save the Child Movement.” It’s credited with freeing nearly 80,000 children.

5. Worldwide Honors

He was featured in a 2005 PBS series “The New Heroes,” hosted by actor Robert Redford.

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Kailash satyarthi > cv.

I dream for a world which is free of child labour, a world in which every child goes to school. A world in which every child gets his rights. These are the words of Kailash Satyarthi, urging people to end violence against children and adopt education.

Satyarthi, who won 2014 Nobel Peace Prize may only have come to attention since the award was announced, yet he already has collection of international accolades, and a great deal of media attention for his decades of work promoting children’s rights. He addresses the United Nations General Assembly, International Labour Organization and several government committees in Europe and the US, specifically arguing that Child Labour is a human rights issue responsible for poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, rising population and many other social evils.

In 1980 he founded Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save the Childhood Movement) which promotes universal education and combats child labour, trafficking and slavery and over the years has acted to protect the rights of more than 84,000 children. He pioneered Global March against Child Labour in the year 1998 and toured the world before descending on Geneva, Switzerland, to petition the International Labour Organization along with thousands of children.

As a result, the ILO included many of the marchers’ demands in their Convention 182, which became the fastest ratified ILO convention ever, with more than 170 signatories. He also set up the Global Campaign for Education, the International Centre on Child Labour and Education (based in Washington DC) and the Rugmark Foundation (now known as GoodWeave), an international certification scheme for carpets made without the use of child labour.

Despite such successes, Satyarthi continues his work at the sharp end of child exploitation. From his small office in Delhi, he and his team conduct raids on sweatshops, brick kilns, carpet factories and other firms using child labour, often putting themselves at great risk of personal attack. Satyarthi says he has suffered several broken bones in the course of these raids and two colleagues have been killed – one shot, the other beaten to death. He is working globally towards ending violence against children. Kailash Satyarthi, born Kailash Sharma, the son of a police officer, in Vidisha, central India, in January 1954, left his high-caste surname and adopted the name Satyarthi, which means “seeker of truth.” He attended Government Boys Higher Secondary School, studied electrical engineering at Samrat Ashok Technological Institute in Vidisha and went on to gain a post-graduate degree in high-voltage engineering before taking up a teaching post at a college in Bhopal.

However, Satyarthi says he never forgot when he was five seeing a boy his age on the steps outside the school cleaning shoes. This, together with the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi and other Indian social activists of the 1950s and 60s, inspired him to start helping others, first by organising a sponsorship deal with a local football club to fund school fees for poor children and by setting up a book bank. Still not satisfied, in 1980 he gave up his lucrative career to devote his time and energy in the fight against exploitation of children. Satyarthi has been awarded numerous international accolades for his struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education’.

Picture: © Peter Badge/Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings

Kailash Satyarthi Age, Wife, Family, Biography & More

Some Lesser Known Facts About Kailash Satyarthi

• Kailash Satyarthi is an Indian electrical engineer, book writer, and social rights activist who is well-known for his children’s rights activism. In 2014, he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai . Satyarthi gained recognition for leading various organizations and initiatives, such as Bachpan Bachao Andolan, the Global March Against Child Labor, and the Global Campaign for Education. He was appointed as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDG) Advocate in 2021.
• He was born into a middle-class family in Madhya Pradesh.
• He started advocating for underprivileged kids when he was in class 5th.
• According to Satyarthi, he started questioning the difference between his and the underprivileged kids’ lives after he witnessed a child do cobbling after being forced by his father as the father did not have money to afford the child’s education.
• To help the poor kids get educated, Satyarthi started a campaign to collect old and used books. He was successful in collecting more than 2000 books, which he distributed among the poor kids with the help of the headmaster of his school.
• Soon, the idea of collecting and distributing old books gained popularity in Vidisha as a result of which it was taken into practice by many schools in the city. This eventually led to the formation of a “book bank” for the underprivileged kids to go and read books without any charge.
• When he was pursuing BTech in Madhya Pradesh, Kailash not only got involved in student politics but also began writing articles related to social activism for Jangyan, which is a Delhi-based magazine run by the Arya Samaj.
• As a college student, he organised numerous events aimed at creating the environment for the upper caste section of society to accept the Dalits as part of the society. However, he was often criticised, especially by the temple pujaris, for doing so.

The priests were shocked and they asked my family members to disown me and shift me to a separate room in the backyard or face ostracisation from the community. I was instructed not to enter the house and was given separate utensils. It was further decided that my food would be sent to the small room itself. Who are these people to throw me out of the community? I do not want to be associated with a hypocrite community in the first place.”

My ‘punishment’ was being decided – whether I would be expelled from my caste, or I would be sent to Haridwar for ‘purification’. This made me even more furious. It was decided that I would be given a separate room and I would be treated like an untouchable. I stayed there for many years in that room, and my mom used to cry while giving me food from a distance. I gathered strength with a lot of difficulty. I then decided that who are they to expel me? I set myself free from the shackles of caste and changed my surname.”

• Satyarthi worked as a college professor in Madhya Pradesh after obtaining a BTech degree but later left to pursue activism.
• He started advocating for the rights of the children in Vidisha and adopted non-violent methods of protesting against injustice against the poor kids as he was deeply influenced by the preachings of Mahatma Gandhi.

A photo of Kailash Satyarthi taken during a campaign

• To safeguard children’s rights, Kailash, in 1980, founded Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA). It was among India’s earliest initiatives focused on shielding children from labour exploitation and human trafficking.

• Satyarthi faced numerous death threats due to his social activism. He was assaulted by a criminal organization in the early 1980s in Uttar Pradesh (UP), resulting in injuries, the loss of friends, and the destruction of his home.
• He founded Sangharsh Jari Rahega, a magazine dedicated to spreading awareness about social activism, in 1981.
• Later, he initiated the National Level Chaupal on Bonded Labour at Daltonganj, Palamu, Bihar.

Kailash Satyarthi leading a march during his younger days

• After that, he founded the Nagrik Ekta Manch through which he advocated for the victims. He also exhibited the photos of the victims, seeking justice for them, in exhibitions. He also visited the rehabilitation camps set up by the Indian government for the displaced Sikhs to inspect the condition of the camps. Despite a threat to his own life, he continuously spoke to give justice to the riot victims.

Kailash organising a march with kids from Uttar Pradesh

• He had a crucial role in enacting the 1986 Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act.

A photo of Kailash Satyarthi taken during the first-ever meeting of the SACCS in 1989

• Reportedly, Satyarthi is the first person to have coined the term “social accountability.” He came up with the concept a long time before the term Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) came into existence.

Kailash giving a speech during the silver jubilee of GoodWeave International

Kailash with President Bill Clinton

Kailash leading the Global March Against Child Labour

• The National Bal Sansad and Bal Adalat, which he organised for the first time in New Delhi in 1997, was attended by more than 20,000 people.
• On 17 January 1998, he led a global march spanning 80,000 kilometres across 103 nations, engaging over 7.2 million participants.

Satyarthi with school-going kids during the Global March Against Child Labour

Satyarthi with school kids during an event of the Global Campaign for Education

Kailash Satyarthi leading the Siksha Yatra

• In 2004, Kailash established the Kailash Satyarthi Children’s Foundation (KSCF) in India. KSCF has initiated programs like Bal Mitra Gram (BMG) to foster a nurturing environment for rural children and Bal Mitra Mandal (BMM) to establish child-friendly conditions in India’s slums.

A photo of Kailash with the freed Nepalese girls who were working forcefully in the circus in UP

• In 2005, he was featured in the PBS series “The New Heroes,” hosted by actor Robert Redford.
• After that, under KSCF, Satyarthi established organisations such as Satayrthi Global Policy Institute For Children (SGPIC) and Under Tactical Response Against Child Cyber Exploitation (TRACE). Through such organisations, Kailash assisted the Maharashtra administration in tackling child abuse and providing quick relief to the affected kids.
• KSCF has its base in the United States of America (USA) as well.

Kailash’s photo taken while he was addressing a rally during the South Asian March Against Child Labor and Trafficking

• The global movement resulted in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) incorporating child trafficking into its official agenda.
• In 2007, BBA created “Ropes In Their Hands,” a short documentary recounting Kailash’s 2004 mission to save young Nepalese girls from a circus in Uttar Pradesh. The film was later showcased at the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival (NYIIFVF) in April 2007.
• In collaboration with Kailash Satyarthi’s Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA), the Supreme Court of India started the All India Legal Aid Cell on Child Rights, under the National Legal Services Authority in India (NALSA), in 2009.
• In the FIFA World Cup in 2010, Kailash’s 1-goal campaign, aimed at seeking the assistance of at least a million people all around the world to speak for children’s rights, was endorsed by Rania Al Abdullah, the Queen of Jordan.
• In 2011, Kailash Satyarthi’s PIL in the Indian Supreme Court led the court to define ‘child trafficking,’ resulting in the adoption of the Palermo Protocol, an internationally consented agreement regarding children’s rights. Later, the Indian government amended IPC Sections 370 and 370A to strengthen anti-human trafficking measures.
• On 8 December 2011, BBA published Missing Children of India, which is a comprehensive analysis of the statistics regarding the children that went missing in India and were not found.
• In 2012, he and the German government called for the International Labour Organization (ILO) to establish regulations to eradicate child labour and exploitation, resulting in the creation of the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC).

A photo Kailash Satyarthi taken while he was in a discussion with Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi

Satyarthi with the UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon

Kailash presenting his Nobel Peace Prize medal to the President of India

President Pranab Mukherjee and Dalai Lama flagging off the 100 Million Campaign

Kailash addressing the participants of the Laureates and Leaders For Children

• The BBA, under Satyarthi’s leadership, has launched several campaigns advocating for children’s rights and has worked with popular actors.

Rescued school children outside the Bal Ashram

A photo of Kailash Satyarthi with slogans written on his arms

Kailash with President Ram Nath Kovind during the closing ceremony of Baharat Yatra

• In February 2017, burglars entered the home of Kailash Satyarthi in Greater Kailash, New Delhi, and stole his Nobel Peace Prize medal along with its citation, both of which he had been awarded in 2014. However, the Delhi Police successfully retrieved the stolen items from the robbers.
• In September 2017, India Times acknowledged Kailash Satyarthi as one of the 11 Human Rights Activists committed to the noble endeavour of safeguarding the principle of a dignified existence for fellow individuals.
• In the same year, Kailash received an invitation to address the 4th Global Conference on Child Labour held in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Kailash Satyarthi with Amitabh Bachchan in Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC)

Satyarthi after the signing of the MOU with the Jharkhand government

Kailash posing for a photo with his book

• Kailash is a passionate writer who began writing in his early years. He has written numerous poems in a collection titled “Chalo Hawaon Ka Rukh Moden.” In 1998, he composed the theme song “Hum Nikal Pade Hain” for the Global March Against Child Labour.

There is one dish that my wife really appreciates – stuffed tomatoes. I had made this dish for Sumedha Ji before we got married; I think it helped in influencing her decision to get married to me.”

• Although Kailash Satyarthi enjoys biking, doctors have advised against it due to spinal cord injuries resulting from attacks by mafias during his social activism.

I helped start Pakistan’s anti-child labour movement, when Pakistan’s army wanted to kill me outside Lahore in 1987. I was addressing brick-kiln workers there when soldiers came and put a dozen guns on my head. I smiled and said, please kill me but only after 10-15 minutes when I’ve finished talking to these people.”

When he decided to quit his teaching job at a college in Vidisha, my mother’s family was very unhappy. They were not too happy anyway, because they had eloped and married. His decision to quit gave my maternal parents another reason to disown my mother. But my mother supported him through very difficult times.”

• As a social activist, he has served in many NGOs such as the Center for Victims of Torture (CVT), the International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF), and the International Cocoa Organization (ICCO) as their board member.
• Kailash Satyarthi has delivered speeches to elected representatives in countries such as the United States of America, Germany, and the United Kingdom on various occasions.

Kailash posing for a photo in a cowshed in one of his ashrams

It is a recognition of the seriousness of the crisis faced by children today in this world. We have witnessed the first increase in child labour in two decades, even before the pandemic hit a warning sign that we are facing the threat of failing on the promises of Agenda 2030. Peace, justice and sustainability will only be achieved when every child is free, safe, healthy and educated. Every child matters.”

Kailash with other delegates at the Peace and Sport Middle East Forum in Riyadh

References/Sources: [ + ]

Kailash Satyarthi

Nobel Peace Laureate 2014

In 1980, Kailash Sathyarthi gave up his career as an electrical engineer and became secretary general for the Bonded Labor Liberation Front; he also founded the Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save Childhood Movement) that year. He conceived and led the Global March Against Child Labor and its international advocacy body, the International Center on Child Labor and Education (ICCLE), which are worldwide coalitions of NGOs, teachers and trades unionists. He has also served as the President of the Global Campaign for Education, from its inception in 1999 to 2011, having been one of its four founders alongside ActionAid, Oxfam and Education International.

In addition, he established GoodWeave International (formerly known as Rugmark) as the first voluntary labelling, monitoring and certification system of rugs manufactured without the use of child-labour in South Asia. This latter organisation operated a campaign in Europe and the United States in the late 1980s and early 1990s with the intent of raising consumer awareness of the issues relating to the accountability of global corporations with regard to socially responsible consumerism and trade. Satyarthi has highlighted child labor as a human rights issue. He has argued that child labour perpetuates poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, population growth, and other social problems, and his claims have been supported by several studies. He has also had a role in linking the movement against child labour with efforts for achieving "Education for All". He has been a member of a UNESCO body established to examine this and has been on the board of the Fast Track Initiative (now known as the Global Partnership for Education). Satyarthi has served on the board and committee of several international organisations including the Center for Victims of Torture (USA), the International Labor Rights Fund (USA), and the International Cocoa Foundation. Mr. Satyarthi’s sustained efforts to end child slavery, trafficking, forced labour and violence received international support when he succeeded in getting child protection and welfare-related clauses included in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations back in September 2015.

Satyarthi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 "for the struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education". Satyarthi is the fifth Nobel Prize laureate for India and the second Indian laureate of the Nobel Peace Prize after Mother Teresa in 1979.

Kailash Satyarthi supported "Save the Girl Child" initiative by Sunita Dube, Chairperson of MedScape India and discussed the possible actions with Yogesh Dube, Child Rights Commission member for betterment of women and children, specifically their health and well being.

Kailash Satyarthi met His Holiness Pope Francis in Vatican City in November 2018 seeking support for a New Legally Binding International Law against Online Child Sexual Abuse. The Holy Father has extended his full cooperation and support to Kailash Satyarthi towards this endeavor and all other associated recommendations that are mentioned in the summary of discussion presented in this press note. Pope has already appointed an Officer from the Vatican to coordinate with Kailash Satyarthi Children’s Foundation to work in this direction.

Satyarthi is building a global movement for an international law and response mechanism against digital and online forms of child sexual exploitation and abuse. In this regard he is meeting all stakeholders irrespective of caste, creed, religion, ethnicity, political affinity and nationality. Notably the Indian Government banned 857 pornographic websites in October 2018 following the demand that Kailash Satyarthi had made at Nagpur for ending online child sexual abuse and child pornography.