Malala Yousafzai has vowed to struggle for every child's right to go to school as she became the youngest ever Nobel laureate, sharing the Peace Prize with Indian campaigner Kailash Satyarthi.
"I will continue this fight until I see every child in school," the 17-year-old Pakistani schoolgirl told an audience in Oslo City Hall on Wednesday after receiving the award.
Malala became a global icon aged 15, after she was shot and nearly killed by the Taliban in October 2012 for insisting that girls had a right to an education.
In a speech peppered with self-deprecating humour, she used the award ceremony to call not just for education but also for fairness and peace.
"The so-called world of adults may understand it, but we children don't. Why is it that countries which we call 'strong' are so powerful in creating wars, but so weak in bringing peace?" she said.
"Why is it, that giving guns is so easy, but giving books is so hard? Why is it, that making tanks is so easy, but building schools is so difficult?"
Malala, who described herself as the "first recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize who still fights with her younger brothers," triggered applause and also frequent outbursts of laughter during her speech.
But the underlying message was that a world that may soon be able to send a person to Mars still allows millions to suffer from "the very old problems of hunger, poverty, injustice and conflicts".
Satyarthi, 60, was recognised by the Nobel committee for a 35-year battle to free thousands of children from virtual slave labour.
"I refuse to accept that the world is so poor, when just one week of global military expenditure is enough to bring all of our children into classrooms," he said after receiving the prize.
"I refuse to accept that the shackles of slavery can ever be... stronger than the quest for freedom."
Malala recovered from the Taliban attack after being flown for extensive surgery in Birmingham, central England, where she and her family have since been based and where she continues her education and activism.
Satyarthi's organisation Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Movement to Save Childhood) prides itself on liberating more than 80,000 children from bonded labour in factories and workshops across India and has networks of activists in more than 100 countries.
According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) there are about 168 million child labourers around the world.
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