Who is Kailash Satyarth?

Kailash Satyarthi (born on January 11, 1954) is a human rights activist from India who has been at the forefront of the global movement to end child slavery and exploitation since 1980, when he gave up a lucrative career as an electrical engineer to initiate a crusade against child servitude. As a grass-roots activist, Kailash and the grassroot movement founded by him, Bachpan Bachao Andolan (English: Save Childhood Movement), have liberated more than 83,000 children from exploitation and developed a successful model for their education, rehabilitation and reintegration into the mainstream society. As a worldwide campaigner, he has been the architect of the single largest civil society network for the most exploited children, the Global March Against Child Labour, which is a worldwide coalition of children’s rights organisations, teachers’ unions and trade unions. His efforts led to the adoption of ILO Convention 182 on worst forms of child labour in 1999. He is also the founding president of the Global Campaign for Education, an exemplar civil society movement working to end the global education crisis and GoodWeave International for raising consumer awareness and positive action in the carpet industry. Since his childhood, Kailash had always questioned the wrong and unjust. As a young child of five years, he was disturbed deeply when he saw a small boy working with his cobbler father shining shoes at the school gate on the first day of school. He could not understand why some children were different from him. It did not take Kailash much time to understand the stark contrast between his life and that of the cobbler’s son. On one hand there was Kailash, who had a “Tilak” (Hindu mark) on his forehead and was dressed in his new school uniform and shoes. His family had performed a religious ceremony to mark the first day of his school life. On the other hand there was the son of the cobbler, with a sullen face and no dreams in his eyes. Kailash was very sad about what he had seen. He went to his classroom and asked his teacher about the small boy outside the school gate. His teacher discouraged his question. He asked him yet again, only to be scolded and instructed to be attentive in class rather than thinking about what was happening outside. Kailash’s inquisitive nature was unsettled and several questions kept echoing in his mind.

 

Kailash always felt very strongly that all children are born equal and therefore have the right to lead a good life. Public schooling was not free when Kailash was around eleven years old. With the help of a few like-minded friends, Kailash started a football club to raise money for the children who were unable to attend school. The membership fee thus collected was donated to support the school fees of few such children. In the years that followed Kailash and his friends went ahead and put up snack stalls at fetes and fairs and were able to raise more money towards school fees of underprivileged children.

 

Kailash founded Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save Childhood Movement) in 1980 as the first people’s movement for social justice, equity, education and peace for all children in India. He braved all odds to uphold the rights of marginalised and victimised children, not only in India but across the world. In the last 35 years his efforts have resulted in the rescue of over 83,000 children and adults from child labour, trafficking and other exploitative situations in India. His interventions have transformed the lives of thousands of children working in carpet weaving, bangle making, the firecracker industry, the circus industry, lock making, brassware products, agricultural labour, sari embroidery, stone quarries and brick kilns, besides domestic child servitude across the world.

 

Being an engineer, he has always had an analytical bent of mind, through which he could get down to the root cause of child labour. He brought to the fore the Triangular Paradigm of child labour, illiteracy and poverty. Pinning down the trafficking of children as a source that feeds into child slavery and other forms of child exploitation, he along with his organisation – through direct interventions, policy advocacy and access to education as part of a sound rehabilitation framework – have saved hundreds of thousands of children from falling prey to trafficking and slavery in India.

In the early 80s, he used to publish a fortnightly, ‘Sangarsh Jaari Rahegaa’ (English: The Struggle Shall Continue), that primarily focused on the work done by motivated people for the larger good of the society, particularly in defending human rights. He has also authored several articles and booklets on issues of social concern and human rights. Kailash set up three rehabilitation and educational centres for freed bonded child labourers that resulted in the transformation of victims of child servitude into leaders and liberators.

 

In the early 1980s, Kailash and his colleagues were attacked by the stone quarry mafia at Faridabad (a small town on the outskirts of Delhi). His office was gutted and his home was ransacked. His colleagues Aadarsh Kishore and Dhoomdas were killed. Kailash’s family used to live under perpetual death threats, but this could not destabilise him from launching a full-blown campaign against slavery and bonded labour that not only sensitised the workers at stone quarries but also successfully mobilised the masses and policy makers to stand up for the rights of such workers. Persistent efforts by Kailash led to the rescue of 2,000 families by the authorities from slavery and forced labour. This also led to a new definition of forced and bonded labour. This toil gave birth to the first ever union of quarry workers in India to empower them for collective bargain for a minimum wage. This also led to the formalisation of a minimum wage structure for the stone quarry workers that lit a spark for the trade union movement in India. This was a mammoth step towards workers’ empowerment and rights.

 

Kailash felt that there was a dire need for an international law on policy against the worst forms of child labour. In 1996 he put forth to the world a proposal for such a law. The very same year he innovatively conceptualised the Global March Against Child Labour, organised in 1998 across 103 countries with 7.2 million participants. This was one of the biggest mass mobilisation campaigns in history. The participation of children in the march was unprecedented and they were the real icons of this movement. On June 2, 1998, for the first time in the history of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), civil society under the leadership of Kailash was permitted to enter the Palais des Nations (Geneva headquarters of the United Nations). Children along with Kailash walked in and addressed labour ministers and leaders of employer and labour organisations, demanding a special convention on the worst forms of child labour. This ultimately triggered the discussions on the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention (No. 182), which was finally adopted by the ILO in 1999. 

 

In 2007 the Global March Against Child Labour under Kailash’s leadership convened the South Asian March Against Child Trafficking for forced labour, which created unprecedented awareness on the issue of trafficking of children for forced labour in the region. 

 

In 2014, Kailash Satyarthi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with Malala Yousafzai for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education. Kailash has dedicated the entire prize sum to the advancement of the rights of children. On January 7, 2015, he handed over his Nobel medal to the President of India, dedicating it to his motherland and its great people. The medal is now permanently displayed at the President’s House Museum in New Delhi. According to Kailash in a civilized society, there is no place for violence against children.

 

Source: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2014/satyarthi/biographical/