Photo credit: Daniel Swartz
“Lincoln Memorial is a place of inspiration for everyone,” 2014 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Kailash Satyarthi told Hollywood on the Potomac just prior to a special meet up on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial pronouncing freedom for the world’s children on the 157th anniversary of President Lincoln’s famous “House Divided” speech. “President Lincoln has become the symbol for human emancipation and freedom; that’s why the Lincoln Memorial is very important for any fight against child slavery or any form of slavery and exploitation. Martin Luther King also made a historic contribution.”
Kailash Satyarthi
The gathering celebrated the progress made and geared up for the significant work ahead. The world still has 168 million child laborers and Satyarthi is on a mission to free each one of them. He liberated 83,994 children from exploitation with his grass root movement Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save the Childhood Movement) and developed a successful model for their education and rehabilitation. He is the architect of the single largest civil society network for the most exploited children – The Global March Against Child Labor. His efforts led to the adoption of the ILO Convention on child labor and is one of Fortune Magazine’s 2015 World’s 50 Greatest Leaders.
Kailash Satyarthi
“When I got the message that I was to be presented with the Nobel Peace Prize I could not believe it,” said Kailash. “My feeling was that it was the biggest ever acknowledgement to my cause. And my cause is simple – that every single child should be treated a child. I realized that this is the biggest ever recognition for millions of children or hundreds of millions of children who are deprived of their childhood and perhaps this award will help them in gaining some identity, some respect and dignity. Gradually my life changed. My personal life quite a lot because so many people came to visit and there were many phone calls, and so much media attention. I feel very very encouraged and inspired by this. It connected me. I got more than 15,000 almost 16,000 invitations to go to good places. But most importantly people are respecting the cause and relating to a concept. Also I have to work. I have been traveling and working since morning to evening. I can’t take off to some rest or picnic or anything, so it’s a part of life, but the demand is bigger than ever before.”
Eight foot letters spelled the word “FREEDOM” against the backdrop of the Lincoln Memorial and as the event closed, the word “FREEDOM” illuminated marking the 157th anniversary of President Lincoln’s House Divided speech.
Q: Do you think there’s any real hope for solving this problem?
A: “I am very optimistic and hopeful because I enjoyed every little success. I try to build on it. I also did not discard any failures because one can learn from that. I kept on doing my work week by week or step by step and learning from my own experience. When I started the fight against child labor, whether In India or anywhere in the world, there was no organization fighting against child slavery and child labor. It was difficult. It was just learning by doing. Now, I’m confident because of every help out there during the last 17 to 20 years, a number of child laborers has been decreased from almost 260 million to 168 million. The number of out of school children have been also dropped by more half from 113 million to 58 million. Many things are changing in the world. So corporate social responsibility and the communities and the media intervention is very very remarkable. The corporate sector has become much more responsible. We have made considerable progress and making new laws in the world, changing laws, international laws, some enforcement, then the business and industrial part, and finally the social consciousness for education and the fight for children has been increasing.”
Satyarthi was joined by philanthropist Connie Milstein and MTV’s Gregg Sulkin
Connie Milstein with Gregg Sulkin
“It is not the responsibility of one or another organization or government to solve these problems,” he concluded. “It is a collective modern responsibility of the entire world. Everybody has to wipe out this scourge of slavery from the face of human kind. That would be my message today, that we can beat this.”
