Gratitude Monday: Peace out!

I’m very often grateful for small things in my life, here on Gratitude Mondays. Dahlias, cotton candy, idiots, rain, library systems working. Sometimes I aim a skosh higher: a fundraising walk, the Irish, first responders.

Today I’m going global. And Nobel. I am joyfully grateful that the Nobel Peace Prize committee got its head out in the sunshine and has awarded this year’s prize to a teenaged Pakistani advocate for the education of girls, and an Indian man who’s spent decades fighting against child labor, trafficking in children and forced marriage of young girls.

Malala Yousafzai, 17, nearly died two years ago when a Taliban hit squad gunned her down on a school bus in retaliation for her girls’ education campaign. Since being airlifted to the UK for medical treatment for her head wound, Yousafzai has lived and gone to school there. She was in chemistry class when the news came of the Nobel award.

Her advocacy has spread far beyond the borders of Pakistan, and she is a hero to millions who support the notion that society is better off when all its members get an education.

She is still under a Taliban death threat, and (rather predictably) some Pakistani Muslim factions are putting forward the conspiracy theory that the Nobel Prize is some sort of continuation of the Forces of the West Using Malala for their Own Purposes. Liaqat Baloch, of a right-wing Muslim political party, pouted, “There are lots of girls in Pakistan who have been martyred in terrorist attacks, women who have been widowed, but no one gives them an award. So these … activities are suspicious.”

Yeah, right. This is rich, given that the terrorist attack Yousafzai survived was ordered by the likes of Baloch himself.

So you can see that Yousafzai has an uphill climb here. But if there’s anyone with the brains and the backbone to make it, it’s this young woman, who has never displayed anything less than grace, determination and generosity.

Kailash Satyarthi, 60, trained as an electrical engineer and taught the subject at college level until he became interested in the issue of child labor, against which there are laws in India, but they’re barely enforced. Satyarthi founded the Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save the Childhood Mission) in 1980, and has been at the forefront of the fight against trafficking in children and for education.

This kind of work has not made him popular amongst management in the global supply chain, or with national and local governments, all of whom count on cheap, uneducated child labor for the production of cheap textiles and other goods to feed Walmart and Apple Store shoppers. He’s also been a thorn in the side of police forces in India when his organization intervenes in cases of selling girls into marriages.

So far, if there have been any death threats, at least no one’s shot him in the head.

I’m told that nominees for the Peace Prize this year might have included Edward Snowden, Pope Francis and Vladimir Putin. I can only think that last one was some frat boy joke, stuffing the nomination box after a three-day Jägerbomb kegger. (Although, given some of the recent awards, I’m not ruling it out entirely.)

His Holiness might be a contender for a number of years. So far he’s looking good; let’s see if he can keep it up. But I have to say that, in awarding this year’s Prize to these two advocates for children—and especially to Malala Yousafzai, who’s displayed more courage, consistency and conviction in her 17 years than every man and woman in government around the world could maintain for three hours—the Nobel Committee is giving us hope for the future.

I take real heart from this, especially in light of the UN members patting themselves on the backs for planning a conference on gender equality without including women.

This is how you work for gender equality, boys, and for the protection of the weakest members of society. I'm really grateful that one international organization gets it.