The Laureates and Leaders Initiative for Children’ will be initiated by the Kailash Satyarthi Children’s Foundation which aims to bring Nobel laureates from all disciplines and not just the Peace Prize winners as well as world leaders together to use their “moral authority” for children’s rights and fight against child slavery and trafficking.
Satyarthi, 62, who shared the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize with Pakistani girls’ rights activist Malala Yousafzai, 18, is also working on an ambitious ‘100 million for 100 million campaign’ that will bring together 100 million youth from across the world to channelise their energy for fighting for the rights of the nearly 100 million children who are left out and are denied basic rights like education and proper healthcare.
Satyarthi said he plans to launch the ‘100 million for 100 million’ campaign by end of this year. “I always believed in globalising compassion. This time I want to engage an entire generation. We should not waste the energy, enthusiasm, eagerness and the idealism of our youth,” Satyarthi told PTI in an interview in Minneapolis, where he is attending and participating in the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize Forum, he said the energy of the youth should be harnessed and channelised for the betterment of the 100 million young people who do not have the same opportunities to grow and learn.
“They must feel that they have some moral responsibility and obligation towards the 100 million children and youth left out,” he said. Satyarthi said he wants to launch the 100 million campaign along with ‘The Laureates and Leaders Initiative’ which will be a global campaign based in India.
Explaining his reasoning behind the initiative, Satyarthi said after he won the Nobel prize, he realised that while the intellectual and academic knowledge of Nobel winners in other disciplines such as chemistry, physics, literature, economics and medicine had been utilised to advance human history, their “moral authority and outreach” had “not been utilised and harnessed for children.”
PTI