From child labour to child rights leader: The Om Prakash Gurjar story

In many villages across rural India, childhood is often shaped by forces far beyond a child’s control. Poverty, debt, and social inequality can quietly erase the simplest dreams, school, play, or even the freedom to choose one’s future. For Om Prakash Gurjar, childhood began under those very circumstances. Yet his journey would eventually transform him from a child labourer into one of the world’s youngest voices for children’s rights. Scroll down to read more.

A childhood lost to labour

Om Prakash Gurjar was born in 1992 in a small village in Rajasthan, into a family struggling under deep poverty and debt. His parents worked as bonded labourers for a landlord, a system that trapped many families in cycles of unpaid or underpaid work for generations. For Om Prakash, childhood ended almost as soon as it began. At the age of five, instead of learning the alphabet or playing with friends, he was sent to work in the fields alongside adults. The days were long, the work exhausting. The expectation was simple: help repay the family’s debt.

School was not even an option. Like millions of children trapped in labour across the world, he had never seen the inside of a classroom. Education felt like something that belonged to other children, children whose families were not bound by poverty. Years later, he would remember those early days not only for the physical hardship, but for the quiet feeling of being invisible.

The moment everything changed

His life took an unexpected turn when activists from Bachpan Bachao Andolan arrived in the region. The organisation, founded by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Kailash Satyarthi, had spent decades rescuing children trapped in labour and fighting for their right to education. Om Prakash was among the children they helped free. For the first time in his life, he was no longer expected to work in the fields. Instead, he was given something he had never imagined for himself, the chance to go to school.

The transition was not easy. Sitting in a classroom after years of labour required courage and patience. But the young boy who had once been denied education approached it with determination. Slowly, letters turned into words, and words into ideas. With education came something even more powerful: awareness. Om Prakash began to understand that what he had experienced was not just personal misfortune. It was part of a much larger injustice faced by millions of children.

Finding a voice for other children

As he grew older, Om Prakash refused to leave his past behind. Instead, he chose to confront it. Still in his early teens, he began speaking out against child labour and advocating for the right to education. He travelled to villages, encouraging parents to send their children to school instead of work. He also spoke about the importance of birth registration, which is often the first legal recognition of a child’s existence and rights.

What made his voice powerful was its authenticity. He was not speaking as an outsider or a distant activist. He was speaking as someone who had lived that reality. Other children listened because he understood them. Adults listened because his story was impossible to ignore.

A global recognition at fourteen

In 2006, the world began to take notice of the young activist from Rajasthan. At just 14 years old, Om Prakash Gurjar was awarded the International Children’s Peace Prize, one of the most prestigious honours given to young changemakers working for children’s rights. The award recognised his courage in standing up against child labour and campaigning for education and identity rights for children.

For a young boy who had previously toiled in the fields as a laborer, finding himself on a global stage was a moment that represented so much more than just personal success. It served as a powerful reminder that the voice of a child, even one who enters the world under the most challenging and adverse circumstances, has the potential to resonate and reach an international audience.

Turning pain into purpose

Today, Om Prakash Gurjar continues to work as a child rights advocate. His work focuses on protecting vulnerable children and ensuring they receive education, legal identity, and freedom from exploitation. But perhaps the most powerful part of his story is not the awards or recognition. It is the transformation. A child who once laboured silently in the fields now speaks for children who still cannot. A boy who was denied education now fights so that others may enter classrooms without fear. His life reminds us that behind every statistic about child labour is a human story, a child with dreams waiting for a chance to exist. And sometimes, when one child finds that chance, he becomes the reason thousands of others will find theirs too.