The Nobel Peace Prize Committee has made a very interesting choice of laureates this year; Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzai. The focus is thus on the child's right to a decent childhood and to education. It is also given to two persons who represent conflictual identities; Indian hindu and Pakistani muslim. Finally, it centres on girls and women's rights to education, in a world where girls and women are discriminated against generally, and particularly in Southern Asia (Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh). From a peace and conflict perspective, this year's choice of laureates attends to the central realisation that structural violence leads to direct violence—the exclusion of children, particularly girl children, from social development is obviously part of the conflict scenarios of our times, as well as times gone by.
