Kailash Satyarthi, during Shiksha Yatra 2001

Born in 1954 in the historical town of vidisha, madhya pradesh in central india, kailash satyarthi is synonymous with the crusade against child slavery. In 1980, when he gave up a promising career as an electrical engineer to campaign against servitude in India, child slavery was a non-issue. In fact, phrases like 'child servitude', 'child bonded labor' were neither in usage nor easily found in political debates, academic research, judicial discourses or social agendas. Perhaps, his biggest contribution has been that he changed the fixed mind-set of opinion makers from complete denial of the existence of child servitude into acknowledgment of it as a major national and international issue.

As a crusader, Satyarthi has had the unprecedented opportunity to sit and motivate the indigenous people, tribals and the poor in remote villages of Africa, Latin America and Asia, as well as address the UN General Assembly, International Labor Conferences, UNESCO's High Level Group on Education and Parliamentary hearings in many countries. He has been regularly invited to address some of the biggest international congregations of workers, teachers, and students as a keynote speaker.

As a grassroots activist, he has led the rescue of over 67,000 child slaves and developed a successful model for their education and rehabilitation. 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 Labor', active in over 140 countries.

As an analytical thinker, he made the issue of child labor as a human rights issue, not a welfare matter or charitable cause. With forceful arguments he has established that child labor is, in fact, responsible for the perpetuation of poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, population explosion and many other social evils. He has played the most important role in linking the fight against child labor with the efforts for achieving 'Education for All'. In fact, he has been one of the pioneer advocates of the now established belief, that both child labor and illiteracy are two sides of the same coin.

The formation and the ideology behind the Global Campaign for Education (GCE), which he heads today, is the result of such envisioning. Today, he is leading the two most important and effective civil society movements for social change, 'Global March Against Child Labor' and 'Global Campaign for Education'.

The Global March movement is striving for the genuine implementation of the international laws against child labor. The most recent law, ILO Convention 182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labor, has been the result of an unprecedented mass mobilization spearheaded through an 80,000-km physical march in over 100 countries in 1998. Presently well over 150 countries have ratified this Convention. The movement is also active on other important issues, like ending the use of child servants, demanding allocation of 0.1% of the GDP (Gross Domestic Production) of developed countries for poor children's cause, identifying and documenting the magnitude of the worst forms of child labor in each country, campaigning against child labor in various industries, like football, carpet, etc. On the other hand, GCE is campaigning hard for the implementation of Dakar goals of 'Education for All' as well as establishing the mechanisms for global resource mobilization for basic education through international advocacy and lobbying work.

Satyarthi is the Chairperson of the 'International Center on Child Labor and Education' (ICCLE), Washington, D.C. ICCLE is one of the foremost policy institutions to bring an authentic and abiding southern grassroots perspective into the US policy domain. He is also on the Board of several other international organizations, such as the Center for Victims of Torture, International Labor Rights Fund, and the International Cocoa Foundation (ICF). On the ICF board he represents the views of global civil society in promoting fair working conditions and an end to child labor in cocoa production.

On the home front, Satyarthi has built a national movement against child labor, lead a mass campaign for basic education, organized several marches across the country, brought political and judiciary machinery into action, and sensitized media in favor of the most oppressed children. As a visionary and practical thinker, he established three centers for released child slaves to develop them into leaders and liberators of tomorrow. Hundreds of such former victims are now engaged in bringing freedom into the lives of their fellow community kids who are still trapped under the yoke of servitude.

Recently, he has promoted the empowerment of children through a nationwide crusade for the formation of Child Friendly Villages. India has the dubious distinction of having the largest number of children in servitude and exploitative labor. More than two thirds of them are engaged in the rural informal economy and agriculture. The concept of 'Bal Mitra Gram' (Child Friendly Village) is an innovative approach towards the total elimination of child labor and universalisation of education. The concept of a children's village council has evolved to enhance community awareness and participatory democracy and has been an unprecedented success.

He is also busy in multiplying his pioneering initiative of voluntary social labeling in the carpet industry, popularly known as Rugmark. Rugmark, is now a fully established international consortium of independent bodies from a dozen carpet exporting and importing countries. Rugmark is the social label given by Rugmark Foundations after a thorough field inspection verifying that the carpet was made without child labor. This initiative gives positive alternatives to responsible businesses, protecting them from any possible boycott and sanctions. On the other hand, it also gives an ethical choice to consumers worldwide, provides new employment opportunities for adults and helps in the restoration of childhood. He is pursuing the industries and other stakeholders to adopt a similar system for knitwear, sporting goods and the other international common products.

Kailash Satyarthi, Chairperson, Global March Against Child Labour has been selected as one of the three social entrepreneur, featured in Principle Voices on CNN International. Mr. Satyarthi's thoughts on forced labour and child labour have been published in full page article in Time's on June 18th issue and Fortune's July 2nd issue.

Kailash Satyarthi has started a fight against child trafficking for forced labour through South Asian March Against Child Trafficking (SAMACT). The one month long march from 25th Feb-22nd March 2007 covered 5000 km. The March along the Indo Nepal Bangla border consisted of a physical walk by the core marchers (100 in number) joined by local people while passing through the by-lanes of cities, towns, villages and remote countryside. Approximately 200,000 people were directly affected en route and more than 10,000,000 reached and sensitised through media and other IEC tools.

Satyarthi's contribution has been recognized through several prestigious international awards.
These include:

The life and work of kailash satyarthi have been the subject of a number of documentaries, television series, talk shows, advocacy and awareness films, Magazines and news items of all leading print and electronic media worldwide.

Satyarthi lives in new delhi, india. His family includes his wife, a son, a daughter, colleagues and children.