Evidently the winner or winners of the Nobel Peace Prize will be announced this Friday. This award, which at least in my opinion, does always recognize someone who has taken personal risks to demonstrate their commitment to peace and fundamental human rights, this year if awarded to Malala Yousafzai, would be given to someone who truly deserves it:
The fact that the Taliban feels compelled to issue a threat to harm her if this were to happen says too much about the Taliban. And the fact that the expected reaction in Pakistan is, as the article indicates, likely to be ‘muted’ says a lot about Pakistani society too unfortunately.
I have said for many years that, again only in my opinion, how women are treated in a society is the proverbial canary in the coal mine telling you how open or fair that society is. Societies that treat women as second class citizens hurts the society at large. It is not a coincidence that those countries that have better treatment of women tend to have more vibrant economies.
In that vein, a truly wonderful film which I have mentioned before which talks about the place of women in such societies which I would highly, highly recommend seeing is Wadjda, http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/wadjda_2013/. Quoting from Red Tomatoes, the “first feature film shot entirely in Saudi Arabia’ AND the first feature film made by a female Saudi filmmaker. It is remarkable how a story about a girl who wants to buy and ride a bike has such wonderful life lessons to impart.
Comments
One response to “A Wonderful Nobel Peace Prize Candidate”
Well, Wadjda is one of the wonderful movie from saudi arabia and watched it a couple of time even I don’t know the language so later search it with subtitles in english that helped me to understand it well.