Pakistani schoolgirl and education activist Malala Yousufzai haf been awarded the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize along with Indian children’s rights activist Kailash Satyarthi.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee acknowledged the two of them for their fight against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education.

It awarded the prize saying that peaceful global development can only come about if children and the young are respected.

Malala, who was shot in the head by the Taliban in 2012 after campaigning for girls’ education, at the age of just 17, is the youngest recipient of the prize.

The committee said at the announcement in Oslo that 60 year old Satyarthi has maintained the tradition of Mahatma Gandhi and led various forms of peaceful protests, focusing on the grave exploitation of children for financial gain.

He has headed the rescue of tens of thousands of child slaves and developed a successful model for their education and rehabilitation.

The Nobel Prizes in medicine, chemistry, physics and literature were also announced earlier this week, while the economics award will be announced on Monday.

The Nobel Prize in Medicine 2014 was awarded with one half to John O’Keefe and the other half jointly to May-Britt Moser and Edvard I. Moser “for their discoveries of cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain”.

The Nobel Prize in chemistry 2014 was awarded jointly to Eric Betzig, Stefan Hell and William Moerner “for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy”.

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2014 was awarded jointly to Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura “for the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes which has enabled bright and energy-saving white light sources.