The 2014 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Malala Yousafzai from Pakistan and Kailash Satyarthi from India, the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced earlier this month.

Both defenders of children’s rights, Satyarthi has focused on child trafficking and labor while Malala has brought attention to children’s education.

This year’s award has garnered much attention because, at 17, Yousafzai is the youngest recipient of the Nobel.

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However, it is due to her youth that Malala has brought international awareness to education by risking her own life to go to school.

In 2009, at the age of 11, Malala began writing a blog for BBC speaking out against the Taliban’s ban on girl’s education in her Pakistani community. She defied their calls to stop attending school. Three years later, a member of the Taliban shot her in the head on the school bus to silence her voice forever.

Miraculously, she survived from her wounds after extensive surgery in Britain and now millions hear her voice.

She has created her own organization, the Malala Fund, which advocates for governments to make policies to enhance girls’ access to school. The organization also gives funding to groups all over the globe who promote education.

Malala said it is “an encouragement to go forward and believe in myself.”

Satyarthi has also been an influential leader in children’s rights. He has fought for more than 30 years to end child labor and trafficking by leading raids to free those held captive.

Leader of the Global March Against Child Labor, Satyarthi raises awareness of products produced by child labor. His aim is to end child slavery in his lifetime.

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Both recipients of the award have called upon their governments’ prime ministers to attend their award ceremony.

This is particularly important because tensions between the Pakistani and Indian governments have degraded over the past years with 20 being killed on the border earlier this month.

Nobel Committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland said it is imperative for “a Hindu and a Muslim, an Indian and a Pakistani, to join in a common struggle for education.”

Additionally, this year’s Nobel Prize is significant because it draws attention to an often forgotten cause in a world focused on the terrorism of ISIS and the spread of Ebola. Ensuring that education is accessible to children all over the globe is equally important.

Unlike many other causes that seem completely out of our control, universal education has made huge strides over the past decade. According to the United Nations, the number of out-of-school children has dropped by nearly half since 2000.