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.
Kailash has always been of the firm view
that child labour is an issue that affects the developed world much as it does
the developing world. 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. This was big victory for all the civil society
organisations under the flagship of the Global March Against Child Labour, but
Kailash did not stop at this. He along with his partners in over 140 countries
launched a worldwide campaign aimed at universal ratification of this
Convention. As a result, this legislation was quickly and widely ratified.
- By Bhavya Bhatia
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