Kailash Satyarthi Conferred Harvard University Humanitarian Award

After the Nobel Peace Prize, Kailash Satyarthi has been conferred with Harvard University’s humanitarian award

More power to Nobel Peace Prize winner Kailash Satyarthi. (Photo: PTI)

Kailash Satyarthi, the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize joint-recipient, has been conferred with Harvard University’s Humanitarian of the Year award, in recognition of his continuing contribution to the cause of child rights, reports The Times of India.

The annual award by the American university is given to an individual whose works and deeds have served to improve the quality of lives and have inspired people to greater heights. Satyarthi is the first Indian to have been given this award.

Satyarthi recently succeeded in getting child protection and welfare-related clauses included in the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with an aim to end slavery, trafficking, forced labour and violence.

I humbly accept the award on behalf of millions of left out children, for whose rights we strive to work for. Let us all pledge together to eradicate child slavery from the world. Even developed countries, including the Unites States, have hundreds of slaves who are forced into labour, pushed into sex trade or trafficked into domestic labour. Undocumented immigrants, people in the margins of the society are pulled into a circuit of slavery.
— Kailash Satyarthi

In the past Harvard has conferred the award upon dignitaries such as Martin Luther King Sr, Secretaries-General of the United Nations: Kofi Annan, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Javier Perez de Cuellar, and Ban Ki-moon; Nobel laureates: Jose Ramos-Horta, Bishop Desmond Tutu, John Hume and Elie Wiesel among others.