(Image Credit: Thomson Reuters Foundation)
This year’s winners include Alaa Murabit, the Founder and President of The Voice of Libyan Women (VLW), a grassroots movement dedicated to increasing women’s social and political participation while eliminating gender-based violence in Libya, and Neha Dixit, an Indian journalist who covers gender issues, development, and conflict in South Asia. Her work has exposed and brought awareness to honor killings by law enforcement, child trafficking, and female feticide. The winners are awarded a small financial prize to encourage them to keep fighting their fight. But ironically enough, the woman presenting the award presents a direct contradiction to the work they do.
The hostess of this year’s awards, HM Queen Noor of Jordan, is touted by many in Western nations as an international human rights activist and an outspoken voice on world peace and justice. Yet even with her work and efforts, she was a poor choice to host the awards. As the monarch of Jordan, a nation with a tarnished record of limiting rights to free expression, assembly, and association, it must be internationally recognized that Queen Noor does not even fulfill the rights she purports to be fighting for within her own country. So why, then, should she be presenting awards for the rights of women who would potentially be punished for doing similar work in her own country?………
By allowing Queen Noor to present these awards to these fearless women, the Thomson Reuters Foundation is only paying lip service to women’s empowerment. The international community must begin holding all our heroes of women’s rights to the same set of global standards, and until we do, it is only a disservice to those very women we say we’re fighting for.
This Queen’s Country Abused Activists. Now Shes Presenting Human Rights Awards. – PolicyMic
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 
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