Nobel laureate engages young Indians in movement to ‘globalize compassion’

VIRATNAGAR, RAJASTHAN, India: Indian Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi has called on India’s youth leaders to help promote and nurture compassion and human fraternity.

Satyarthi, who won the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize with Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people, launched over the weekend the Youth Summit on Human Fraternity and Compassion.

The event in Viratnagar, Rajasthan, co-organized by the Satyarthi Movement for Global Compassion and the UAE-based Zayed Award for Human Fraternity, attracted 600 youth leaders from different parts of India to discuss initiatives for unity and the peaceful resolution of conflicts.

“Young people have a tremendous capacity to make this world a better place. They can protect humanity as well as the planet. It’s because they are much more genuine and much more honest,” Satyarthi told Arab News.

“We realized that when we dream to make this world a better, peaceful, much more humane, sustainable place, then it should be led by the young people. And therefore, this new movement is being started and that is the movement for global compassion.

“We need connectivity, we need unison, we need a moral responsibility, accountability, and a moral compass to lead our world, and therefore this summit is being held.”

For Mohamed Abdelsalam, secretary-general of the Zayed Award for Human Fraternity, it was important to spread the efforts in India, given its cultural, ethnic, and religious heterogeneity.

“The Indian community faces many challenges at present and that’s why it is telling these values of global compassion and human potential are very important in addressing these challenges to make sure that this community, the Indian people, will be able to prosper and live with the spirit of living together as one harmonious nation,” he told Arab News.

“My message is for us to create more space for peace and dialogue for young people. As individuals, as leaders, as governments, as institutions, we have to fight to ensure that these young people have this spirit.”

The way the summit’s participants were chosen reflected India’s diversity.

“We set some criteria for the selection of the young leaders and the participants,” he said.

“Top of these was to select people coming from different cultures, different parts in India, different faiths, and different ethnicities, and bring them together to give them a role model of understanding each other and building peace among them so they go out of this event and spread the message of peace nationwide and worldwide.”