By Shelby Leisinger
Audience members cheered and eyes welled up with tears as 2014 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Kailash Satyarthi spoke about his experiences freeing children from laborious slavery and his dreams to end child slavery.
Dressed in an egg-white tunic and white pants on Tuesday night, Satyarthi spoke in the IMU Second-Floor Ballroom as a part of the University of Iowa’s 2016 Lecture Series to a large crowd full of students, faculty, and community members, evoking a saintly affect.
“If so many children are trapped into slavery and child labor, they are deprived of their education and their future,” he said. “Their freedom is not the problem of one country, it’s a global problem.”
Present in the audience were valued friends and family of Satyarthi: his wife, Sumedha, former Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, a friend of Satyarthi, and UI law Professor Lea VanderVelde. The latter two nominated Satyarthi for the Nobel for more than 10 years before he won.
VanderVelde introduced Satyarthi to the crowd after Gail Agrawal, the dean of the UI College of Law, spoke about the importance of such a renowned figure visiting the UI.
When making the introduction, VanderVelde’s throat grew thick and her speech slowed. Satyarthi’s work has significantly affected her, she said.
“I met him in Iowa City for the first time and went to visit him in India and his projects, the dimension, the layers that he has added to this particular social movement,” she said. “I couldn’t imagine anyone who more deserved the Nobel Peace Prize.”
Satyarthi offered five “P”s to ending child slavery. These include people’s mobilization, policy, practice of operations [direct action of freeing children], partnerships and protection of the children.
For Satyarthi, winning a Nobel Peace Prize now means he gets thousands of offers for speaking engagements across the world, and picking between those engagements can be very difficult.
“They give you a peace medal and take away peace for your whole life,” he joked to the crowd.
Satyarthi’s strong ties to Iowa and the UI can be attributed to his relationship with Harkin, VanderVelde, and because of his daughter Asmita, who attended the UI from 2005 to 2008 as an undergraduate.
Sarah Tortora, the head of the University Lecture Committee, one of the main sponsors, was excited because she said she’s never heard a Nobel peace prize winner speak before.
“He isn’t a huge name, but the people that have seen the subtitle and the people that we’ve managed to reach out to seem pretty excited,” she said.
Satyarthi’s upcoming campaign “100 million for 100 million” invites young people or passionate activists to be the voice for the 100 million children still trapped in slavery.
He is the sixth Nobel Peace Prize laureate to speak at the UI and one of seven lecturers this semester that the University Lecture Committee has worked to bring to the UI.
“Over 160 million [children], 200 million adults are jobless. Every single child is working at the cost of one adult’s job. We have to break this vicious cycle,” Satyarthi said. “It’s necessary that every child should be free and go to classroom, if not done then the growing inequalities and injustices are resulting in growing tensions. We have to solve the problem with children now so that we can protect the entire generation.”
