Paul and Mercy Baskar
Paul and Mercy Baskar

Paul and Mercy Baskar were honored by The World’s Children’s Prize in 2004 for fighting against child labour for over 20 years.

Paul and Mercy Baskar have liberated some 6,000 children from factory work in South India. The children get education, support training and money for their school expenses. Children and adults are taught how dangerous it is for children to work, and how it threatens the environment. Parents get help getting work of their own, so that they can afford to keep their children in school.

Paul, Mercy and their organisation Peace Trust empower children by supporting them in starting children’s rights groups. They try to pressure factory owners into not employing children; they demand that politicians see that the ban on child labour is enforced; and they organise demonstrations against child labour.

Text: Gunilla Hamne
Photos: Kim Naylor

The facts and figures on this page were accurate at the time of writing, in 2004

Related stories
James Aguer
James Aguer Alic
James Aguer Alic has stuggled for decades to free children held in slavery in South Sudan.
Rosi Gollmann with two previously blind children
Rosi Gollmann
Rosi Gollmann was honoured by the World’s Children’s Prize in 2017 for her over 50-year fight for the poorest and most vulnerable children in India and Bangladesh.
Asfaw
Asfaw Yemiru
Asfaw Yemiru from Ethiopia spent over 60 years, since he was 14, devoting all of his time and energy to fighting for the rights of the most deprived children.
Kailash Sathyarthi with children
Kailash frees child slaves
As a young man, Kailash began risking his own life to free children being held as slaves at brickworks and factories.
Hector Pieterson
Hector Pietersen
Hector Pieterson received The World's Children's Honorary Award 2000, posthumously.
James Kofi anan
James Kofi Annan
As a small child, James Kofi Annan was exploited as a slave on a fishing boat for seven years.
Ann Skelton
Ann Skelton
Ann grew up under the violent Apartheid regime in South Africa.
Anne Frank
Anne Frank
In the year 2000, when the World's Children's Prize was founded, the Honorary Award was given posthumously to Anne Frank.
Craig
Craig Kielburger
Craig Kielburger received The World's Children's Prize 2006 because of his struggle to free children from poverty, abuse and other violations of the rights of the child.
Manuel Rodrigues sits with blind children
Manuel Rodrigues
Manuel Rodrigues became blind as a child, but went on to become a successful businessman.
Ambassadors crammed into jeep
Maiti Nepal
Maiti Nepal and its founder Anuradha Koirala fight against the slave trade in girls from Nepal, who are trafficked to brothels in India.
Ashok with a girlsclub
Ashok Dyalchan
Dr Ashok Dyalchand has fought tirelessly against child marriage and for girls’ equal rights in India for the past 40 years.
Iqubal
Iqbal Masih
Iqbal Masih became a debt slave in a carpet factory in Pakistan when he was a child.
Indira
Indira Ranamagar
Indira Ranamagar was honored by the World's Children's Prize in 2014 for her 20-year struggle for prisoners' children in Nepal.
Nelson Mandela bumbing forheads with girl.
Nelson Mandela
After 27 years in prison Nelson Mandela became the first democratically elected president of South Africa, aiming to give children of all skin colours equal rights for the first time.
Anna with children and mothers
Anna Mollel
Anna Mollel has been nominated to become the WCP Decade Child Rights Hero 2020, for her fight for differently abled Maasai children and other children living in poverty in rural areas of northern Tanzania.
Emani and Liz
Emani Davis & Liz Gaynes
Elizabeth Gaynes and her daughter Emani Davis received The World’s Children’s Honorary Award 2004 for their tireless struggle for children of prisoners.
Cythia Maung
Cynthia Maung
Dr.
Anna-Maria
Ana María Marañon
Ana María Marañon de Bohorquez received The World's Children's Honorary Award 2006 because she has worked selflessly for many years for the street children in Cochabamba, Bolivia.
Valeriu with children from Ferentari
Valeriu Nicolae
Valeriu grew up in poverty and was discriminated against because he was Roma.
Pastoral da Criança’s
Pastoral da Criança
Pastoral da Criança’s then 155,000 volunteers were honored by The World’s Children’s Prize in 2003 for their unpaid but successful work to reduce mortality and under-nourishment among Brazil’s children.
Guylande posing with some children.
Guylande Mésadieu
When Guylande saw all the children who were forced to live on the street or work as domestic slaves in Haiti, she and her friends set up the organization Zanmi Timoun, Children’s Friend.
Children’s Parliament Barefoot College
Barefoot College
Barefoot College and the Children's Parliament received The World's Children's Honorary Award 2001 because, for more than 30 years, they have made empowered tens of thousands of poor children, especially girls, and given them the chance of education.
Javier Stauring speaks to children in juvenile hall unifroms, with hands on their backs.
Javier Stauring
Javier Stauring wants to bring justice for children and families through reconciliation and dialogue, instead of through punishment and revenge.
Jetsun Pema
Jetsun Pema
Ama Jetsun Pema la has worked her whole life to support for refugee children from occupied Tibet after fleeing to India along with her brother, the 14th Dalai Lama.
Kimmie
Kimmie Weeks
While fleeing in wartime Liberia, Kimmie almost died of cholera.
Girls dancing
Cecilia Flores-Oebanda
Cecilia Flores-Oebanda was honored in 2011 by the World's Children’s Prize for her 20-year struggle against child labour and trafficking.
Somali
Somaly Mam
Somaly Mam was commended with The World's Children's Prize in 2008 for her struggle to save girls who were sold as slaves to brothels in Cambodia.
aocm
AOCM
The organization AOCM was formed by children and young people whose parents were killed in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
murhabazi with children
Murhabazi Namegabe
Murhabazi Namegabe has been imprisoned, assaulted and received many death threats during his struggle to help child soldiers and other vulnerable children in war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Maggie
Maggy Barankitse
Maggy Barankitse has ought for decades to help children live a better life in war-torn Burundi, where armed conflict and poverty lead to many violations of children’s rights.
Molly Melching with children
Molly Melching
Molly Melching was honoured by The World’s Children’s Prize in 2017 for her 40-year struggle to end female genital cutting, child marriage and forced marriage.
Police and small boy
Casa Alianza
Casa Alianza received The World’s Children’s Honorary Award 2002 for its struggle for children’s rights in Central America.
Phymean Noun
Phymean Noun
Phymean Noun grew up during the genocide in Cambodia.
Agnes Stevens
Agnes Stevens
Agnes and her organization School on Wheels had a simple idea.
Room to read school in Cambodia
John Wood
John Wood quit his job as a manager at the Microsoft company to fulfill his dream: to fight poverty by giving children all over the world the chance to go to school.
Sakena Yacoobi with girls in the classroom, Afghanistan.
Sakena Yacoobi
As a young girl Sakena Yacoobi was the only girl in her class.
Graca
Graça Machel
Graça Machel was named The World's Children's Prize Decade Child Rights Hero 2009 for her long and courageous struggle for children’s rights, mainly in Mozambique.
Inderjit Khurana and children dancing on train platform
Inderjit Khurana
Inderjit Khurana received The World's Children's Honorary Award 2007 for her long struggle for the poorest and most vulnerable children’s right to education.
Prateep
Prateep Ungsongtham Hata
Since the age of 16, when Prateep Ungsongtham Hata started her own slum school, she has spent her life fighting for children growing up in poverty in slums and rural areas in Thailand.
Rachel
Rachel Lloyd
Rachel Llloyd is a survivor of mental and physical abuse during her childhood in the United Kingdom, and was exploited in sex clubs in Germany as a teenager.
Nkosi
Nkosi Johnson
Nkosi Johnson from South Africa was only twelve years when he died.
Spès and children posing for the camera.
Spès Nihangaza
When Spès Nihangaza and her sister Caritas were growing up they were taught to help the sick and the weak.
Children's peace movement
Children's Peace Movement
The Children's Peace Movement received The World's Children's Honorary Award 2001 because it has, in an environment filled with violence, grown into a force for peace in Colombia.
Malala
Malala Yousafzai
Malala Yousafzai fights for every girl’s right to education and a life of freedom, in Pakistan and all over the world.
Betty
Betty Makoni
Betty Makoni received The World's Children's Prize in 2007 for her long struggle for girls in Zimbabwe to be freed from abuse and to have the same opportunities in life as boys.
Sompop with children
Sompop Jantraka
Sompop Jantraka grew up in poverty and started working at the age of six.
Monira
Monira Rahman
Monira Rahman was commended by the World’s Children’s Prize in 2011 for her courageous fight to put an end to acid and petrol violence in Bangladesh.
Condori
Josefina Condori
Josefina Condori received The World's Children's Honorary Award 2008 for her long struggle for girls who work as maids in Peru, often in slave-like conditions.
Dunga mothers
Dunga Mothers
The Dunga Mothers fight for the rights of children with HIV/Aids and supports children who have lost their parents to AIDS in villages in the Kisumu area in Kenya .
Gabriel Mejía Montoya
Gabriel Mejía Montoya
Gabriel Antonio Mejía Montoya, Father Gabriel, was honoured by World’s Children’s Prize in 2018 for his more than 30-year struggle for Colombia’s vulnerable children – street children, child soldiers and children sentenced to prison.
Many of the Child Rights Heroes
Laureates
Child Rights Heroes A-Z.
WORLD'S CHILDRENS PRIZE FOUNDATION

Långgatan 13, 647 30, Mariefred, Sweden
Phone: +46-159-129 00 • info@worldschildrensprize.org

© 2020 World’s Children’s Prize Foundation. All rights reserved. WORLD'S CHILDREN'S PRIZE®, the Foundation's logo, WORLD'S CHILDREN'S PRIZE FOR THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD®, WORLD'S CHILDREN'S PARLIAMENT®, WORLD'S CHILDREN'S OMBUDSMAN®, WORLD'S CHILDREN'S PRESS CONFERENCE® and YOU ME EQUAL RIGHTS are service marks of the Foundation.

 
x
x
x