(Transcript from World News Radio)
Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai and Indian child rights activist Kailash Satyarthi and are the joint winners of this year's Nobel Peace Prize.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee says they're being recognised for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people, and for the right of all children to education.
Santilla Chingaipe has the details.
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Nobel Committee Chairman Thorbjorn Jagland made the announcement in the Norwegian capital, Oslo.
He says the committee regards it as important to recognise that an Indian Hindu and a Pakistani Muslim share a common struggle to allow children to go to school, instead of being forced to work.
"Many other individuals and institutions in the international community have also contributed. It has been calculated that around 168 million child labourers around the world today. In the year 2000, the figure was 78 million higher. The world has come closer to the goal of eliminating child labour."
Now aged 17, Malala Yousafzai was already a campaigner for the right of girls to have an education when she was shot by the Taliban in northern Pakistan two years ago.
After undergoing surgery and recovering in Britain, she has become an international symbol of resistance to the Taliban's efforts to deny equal rights to women and girls.
She becomes the youngest person in the Nobel Prize's history to receive the annual award.
Thorbjorn Jagland says she's being recognised for an important contribution to the fight for girls to have the right to education.
"Despite her youth, Malala Yousafzai has already fought for several years for the right of girls to education and has shown by example that children and young people too can contribute to improving their own situations. This she has done under the most dangerous circumstances. through her heroic struggle, she has become a leading spokesperson for girls' rights to education."
In an address at the United Nations headquarters in New York last year, Malala Yousafzai said that education was the only way to improve lives.
"Let us pick up our books and our pens. They are our most powerful weapons. One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world. Education is the only solution. Education first."
A Pakistani schoolgirl, Iman, told the BBC of her joy at Malala winning the prize.
"I'm so very proud of her. I mean whenever I watch her on television I always want to be like her. I always think of what happened to her, like the terrorist attack, and they wanted to end her mission. But that didn't happen. She didn't let that happen. And now she's won the peace award and that is just so great. We're so proud of her, all of us."
Although not as well known as Malala Yousafzai, Kailash Satyarthi has worked for several decades campaigning in his native India and around the world against child labour.
Thorbjorn Jagland says it's been his unrelenting commitment to that cause that caught the attention of the committee.
"It is a prerequisite for peaceful global development that the right of children and young people be respected. In conflict-ridden areas in particular, the violation of children leads to the continuation of violence from generation to generation. Showing great personal courage, maintaining Gandhi's tradition has taken various forms of protest and demonstrations, all peaceful, focusing on the grave exploitation of children for financial gain. He has contributed to the development of important international conventions on children's rights."
Kailash Satyarthi gave up his career as an electrical engineer to set up an organisation in India called the Save the Childhood Movement.
For several decades, it's been prominent in the fight to eliminate the extensive problem of child labour in India.
At a recent global summit to eliminate child labour, Mr Satyarthi reflected on the progress being made.
"I share the joy that the number of child labour has been reduced significantly over the last 20 years or so. But personally speaking, whenever I get a reduction of child labour, it heals my wounds and injuries which I have caught several times while I have been saving slave children in my country India. When I started my fight against child labour, noone was prepared to listen. I had to go to the villages and talk to the people, talk to the government officials, and they assumed that they are a part of life, it is nothing new. Children have to work because they are poor - and that was the case in many countries. Most countries i would say. But today, no country, no society, no business can ignore the menace of child labour."
Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi will each receive a half share of the Nobel Peace Prize money of just over one million dollars.
