The Nobel Committee announced on Friday that Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi had jointly won this year's Peace Prize. They will receive the award in a ceremony in Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of the death of industrialist Alfred Nobel, who founded the award in his 1895 will.

"The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2014 is to be awarded to Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzai for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education," the jury said.

Yousafzai, now 17, is a schoolgirl and education campaigner from Pakistan who first rose to prominence through her BBC blog advocating greater access to schooling for girls in Pakistan. In October 2012, she was shot in the head on her school bus by an attacker who had asked for her by name.

The committee said that the other winner, Satyarthi, had maintained the tradition of Mahatma Gandhi and headed various forms of peaceful protests, "focusing on the grave exploitation of children for financial gain."

Symbolically shared

The committee highlighted the significance of sharing the award between campaigners from the uneasy nuclear neighbors.

"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.

"It has been calculated that there are 168 million child laborers around the world today. In 2000, the figure was 78 million higher. The world has come closer to the goal of eliminating child labor."

Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert wrote on Twitter that the award was a "great encouragement for everybody who fights for childrens' rights," offering congratulations to both winners.

Slew of nominees

A record 278 candidates were nominated this year; among the candidates were 231 individuals and 47 organizations.

Although the Nobel Committee discourages nominating bodies from announcing their candidates, it is not prohibited and so some nominees are known beforehand. Some of this year's possible winners were Pope Francis, NSA-whisteblower Edward Snowden, and the Novaya Gazeta, an independent Russian newspaper originally set up in 1993 by Mikhail Gorbachev with his Nobel Peace Prize money.

The Committee has made some controversial choices in recent years, including Barack Obama in 2009 not even a year after he had taken office, and Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in 2011, four days before she won re-election.

Candidates may be nominated by several groups, including members of national governments and professors of certain subjects, and previous winners, among others. The Nobel Committee then narrows down the list over eight months.

Last year's winner was the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) for their role in dismantling the Syrian government's stock of chemical weapons.

es, msh/kms (dpa, Reuters)