Pakistani teenager Malala Yousafzai, who was shot in the head by Taliban Islamists in 2012 for advocating girls’ right to education, and Indian children’s right activist Kailash Satyarthi won the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize yesterday.

Yousafzai, aged 17, becomes the youngest Nobel Prize winner by far and 60-year-old Satyarthi is the first Indian-born winner of the peace laureate. They were picked for their struggle against the oppression of children and for the right of all children to education, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said.

The sharing of the award between an Indian and a Pakistani came after a week of hostilities along the border of the disputed, mainly Muslim region of Kashmir − the worst fighting between the nuclear-armed rivals in more than a decade.

“The Nobel Committee regards it as an important point for a Hindu and a Muslim, an Indian and a Pakistani, to join in a common struggle for education and against extremism,” said Thorbjoern Jagland, the head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

Satyarthi said he hoped that, beyond his fight against child slavery, he and Malala could work for peace in their region.

“I will invite her to join hands to establish peace for our subcontinent which is a must for children, which is a must for every Indian, for every Pakistani, for every citizen of the world,” he told reporters at the New Delhi office of his organisation, Bachpan Bachao Andolan, or Save the Childhood Movement.

Malala was attacked in 2012 on a school bus in the Swat Valley of northwest Pakistan by masked gunmen as a punishment for a blog that she started writing for the BBC’s Urdu service as an 11-year-old to campaign against the Taliban’s efforts to deny women an education.

Yesterday Yousafzai urged children to 'stand up for their rights' after becoming the youngest person to win a Nobel prize.

Speaking after finishing the school day at Edgbaston High School for Girls in Birmingham, she explained that a teacher had broken the news to her in chemistry class. She said: “My message to children all around the world is that they should stand up for their rights.”

Explaining why she had campaigned against extremism despite the risks, she said: “At that time I stood up for my rights and I said ‘I will speak up’. I did not wait for someone else. I had really two options, one was not to speak and wait to be killed, and the second was to speak up and then be killed.

It is an important point for a Hindu and a Muslim, an Indian and a Pakistani, to join in a common struggle

“And I chose the second one because at that time there was terrorism, women were not allowed to go outside of their houses, girls’ education was totally banned, people were killed. At that time I needed to raise my voice because I wanted to go back to school. I was also one of those girls who could not get education. I wanted to learn and be who I can be in my future.”

Satyarthi, who gave up a career as an electrical engineer in 1980 to campaign against child labour, has headed various forms of peaceful protests and demonstrations, focusing on the exploitation of children for financial gain.

“It is a disgrace for every human being if any child is working as a child slave in any part of the world,” Satyarthi said.

“I feel very proud to be an Indian that in India I was able to keep this fight on for the last 30 years or so. This is a great recognition and honour for all my fellow Indians.”

In a recent editorial, Satyarthi said that data from non-government organisations indicated that child labourers could number 60 million in India.

“Children are employed not just because of parental poverty, illiteracy, ignorance, failure of development and education programmes, but quite essentially due to the fact that employers benefit immensely from child labour,” he wrote.

Previous winners

2013: Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons

2012: European Union

2011: Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Leymah Gbowee (Liberia) and Tawakkol Karman (Yemen)

2010: Liu Xiaobo (China)

2009: US President Barack Obama (US)

2008: Martti Ahtisaari (Finland)

2007: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Albert Gore (US)

2006: Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank (Bangladesh)

2005: International Atomic Energy Agency and Mohamed ElBaradei (Egypt)

2004: Wangari Muta Maathai (Kenya)

2003: Shirin Ebadi (Iran)

2002: Jimmy Carter (US)

2001: United Nations and Kofi Annan (Ghana)

2000: Kim Dae-jung (South Korea)

1999: Médecins Sans Frontières (Switzerland)

1998: John Hume (Ireland) and David Trimble (Britain)

1997: International Campaign to Ban Landmines and Jody Williams (US)

1996: Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo and José Ramos-Horta (East Timor)

1995: Joseph Rotblat (Britain) and Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs (Canada)

1994: Yasser Arafat (Palestine), Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin (Israel)

1993: Nelson Mandela and Frederik Willem de Klerk (South Africa)

1992: Rigoberta Menchú Tum (Guatemala)

1991: Aung San Suu Kyi (Burma)

1990: Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (Soviet Union)

1989: The Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso) (Tibet)

1988: UN Peacekeeping Forces

1987: Oscar Arias Sánchez (Costa Rica)

1986: Elie Wiesel (US)

1985: International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (US)

1984: Desmond Tutu (South Africa)

1983: Lech Walesa (Poland)

1982: Alva Myrdal (Sweden) and Alfonso García Robles (Mexico)

1981: Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees

1980: Adolfo Pérez Esquivel (Argentina)