Prize includes the Nkosi statuette and a Desmond Tutu scholarship to fund his education, as well as 50,000 euros to finance his project
This Wednesday, 15-year-old Syrian Bana Alabed received the International Children’s Peace Prize from the KidsRights Foundation, for giving a voice to children in war zones.
Bana Alabed, who received the award from the Yemeni human rights activist and 2011 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Tawakkol Karman, survived the siege of the city of Aleppo in 2016, and defended today that the Syrian President at the time, Bashar al-Assad, should be held accountable for his role in the Syrian war.
According to the KidsRights Foundation, Bana, who “began his activism by sharing his war experiences through diaries, blogs and social media, gaining international attention (…) personifies resilience and courage”.
The teenager recalled this Wednesday “the nights full of fear and the noise of bombs” in Aleppo, when she was seven years old, and dedicated the award to her heroes, such as “the children who suffer in silence” and “the mothers whose tears do not dry”.
“All children deserve to live in peace,” he said, remembering all those in conflict zones, such as Sudan, Ukraine, Gaza or Kashmir.
And addressing Bashar al-Assad, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the “warlords” he assured that children will not remain silent and that their voice will “speak louder”.
The prize includes the Nkosi statuette (name of the first winner of the prize), with a figure of a child pushing a globe, showing how the winners set the world in motion, and a Desmond Tutu scholarship to fund their education, as well as 50,000 euros to finance their project.
The Foundation is committed to supporting similar projects around the world with 25,000 euros, with those that received funding in 2024, 16 in 10 countries, involving 156,000 children around the world.
KidsRights received more than 200 nominations from 47 countries for the 2025 edition of this “Nobel for Peace” for children, which also had as finalists Divyansh Agrawal, 16, from the United States, who “mobilized thousands of people in her fight for climate justice and children’s rights” and Aeshnina (Nina) Azzahra Aqilani, 17, who at the age of 12 began exposing “the harmful practice of Western nations from exporting plastic waste to Indonesia”.
The International Peace Prize for Children has already recognized the work of children’s rights and access to education campaigner Malala Yousafzai and activist and environmentalist Greta Thunberg, having been awarded last year to Nila Ibrahimi, 17, for her efforts to improve education and participation rights for Afghan girls and women.
Rena Kawasaki won it in 2022, also at the age of 17, with a project about young people’s participation in local government bodies in Japan, while Sadat Rahman was the winner in 2020, at the age of 17, for an application to help teenagers who are victims of ‘cyberbullying’ in Bangladesh.
“The motivation behind the award is to provide a platform for children to express their ideas and their personal involvement in defending children’s rights”, says the Dutch KidsRights Foundation on its website, which seeks to draw attention to the rights of minors and for them to be “included on the agenda of political decision-makers around the world”.
