Malala Yousafzai would have been a worthy winner by Femi Popoola

The purpose of this discourse is not to give reasons why Pakistani schoolgirl campaigner Malala
Yousafzai should have won the Nobel Peace Prize ahead of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), or to suggest that the OPCW doesn’t deserve the award. Rather, it’s an attempt to address the notion that it would have been wrong to give her the award. That is very unfair to say the least. Nobody is going on about how Mukwege or any of the other nominees didn't deserve the prize. So why Malala?

There were 259 nominees for this year’s Peace Prize, the highest ever but the list remains a secret as usual. Malala Yousafzai and gynaecologist Denis Mukwege of the Democratic Republic of Congo had been tipped as favourites to take the award. Malala was shot in the head in Pakistan’s Swat Valley after the 16-year-old defended equal rights to schooling for girls, defying repeated threats from militants in her hometown of
Mingora. She now lives in the U.K. and has gained global recognition for devoting her life to the struggle against illiteracy, poverty and terrorism. Since Malala got shot, the percentage of schoolgirls in Pakistan has risen by more than 20%. Dr Dennis Mukwege specializes in the treatment of women who have been gang-raped by rebel forces and has probably become the world’s leading expert on how to repair the internal physical damage caused by gang rape. He has treated several thousands of women since the 1998 Congo’s war and has described how his patients arrive at the hospital sometimes naked, usually bleeding and leaking urine and faeces from torn vaginas. Any of these guys would have been worthy winners including the Organization for the
Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, an agency that has overseen the destruction of 80 percent of the world’s declared chemical weapons, including the entire South Korean and Indian stockpiles. So to suggest that Malala wouldn’t be a worthy recipient is to discredit the work she has done.

It was claimed in some quarters that Malala is only a survivor. That you shouldn’t get a Nobel Prize just because you survived a gunshot. Comparisms have even been made with the hundreds of children who survive Boko Haram attacks but are not exposed to the same media coverage (I’ll get back to that). This is a very valid point except that Malala isn’t just a survivor, she’s an activist. She didn’t get shot while worshiping in church or sleeping peacefully. She was shot because she was campaigning against the Taliban, before the West ever took up her cause. Mandela didn’t get the peace prize because he went to jail. Otherwise, every ex-convict would be eligible. He went to jail for a reason, his struggle against apartheid. Malala wasn’t hit by a stray bullet, she was shot for a reason, her campaign for girl education among others.

It has also been said that Malala is too young to be awarded the prize. She has a long way to go, more time to cement her reputation, become Prime Minister of Pakistan as she claims she wants to be and be more effective as a change agent. I don’t particularly agree. If the Taliban felt the need to terminate her life, it’s because she was making a difference. If you’re good enough, you’re definitely old enough. Besides, is one of the aims of the prize not to encourage and inspire more good works? What better way to inspire millions of teenagers the world over to stand up and resist oppression than to reward a sixteen year old girl who survived such a brutal attack and still has the courage to continue the resistance. If we wait till she’s fifty, what message are we passing to the young ones? While it is true that Malala could tomorrow pull a Miley and start twerking on us, that is not necessarily peculiar to teenagers. Obama hasn’t done his Nobel prize much justice either, has he?

Admittedly, the Western media is fawning over Malala. It’s not every time you get a sixteen year old heroine to portray as evidence of you being the supporters of everything good while the beard-totting guys in the Middle East are made the villains. But that is hardly Malala’s fault. If she didn’t pick up the cause and fight for it in the first place, there would be nothing to fawn over. It is also true that giving her the Nobel prize would bring additional celebrity status and attention which is hardly helpful but is not necessarily bad. Most people, myself included had never heard of the OPCW before they were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel Prize certainly brings with it celebrity status. Not only that, it confers some legitimacy on the recipient. People are more likely to listen to a sixteen year old Nobel Laureate who survived an assassination attempt than a sixteen year old girl who survived an assassination attempt.

Malala is a brave young woman who is reminding us of the importance of educating the girl child. Education is a tool that has the power to correct a lot of ills in our society. In our own country here, the furore surrounding child marriage would not be this big if education was taken more seriously. Even among people who believe child marriage is validated by their religion, uneducated parents are more likely to marry off their kids than educated parents. If we educate all children, child marriage could become like small pox in a generation, eradicated.

The OPCW has done great in dismantling chemical weapons all around the world, albeit quietly without any funfare. The most effective services are those that go unnoticed. Just ask Claudio Makelele. Even though the United States and Russia failed to meet the April 2012 deadline for the demolition of their own chemical stockpile, the OPCW has definitely made the world a safer place and they fully deserve the award for their outstanding work. I mean, you can’t win them all. However, Malala Yousafzai is a brilliant teenager who despite her young age, has achieved much more than most people ever will in their lifetimes. If she had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, it would have been no less than she deserved.

All I’m saying.

visit  http://www.thedreamreaper.wordpress.com