The contest is open to candidates from North Africa, the Middle East, and the Gulf until 1 April, 2020, and three awards will be granted for: the best opinion article, investigative article, and audiovisual news report. The contributions must be centered on subjects relating to rule of law, human rights, good governance, fight against corruption, freedom of expression, democratic development and citizen participation. The jury will be composed of seven voting members from Arab and European media and one observer representing the European Union. The names of the jury members will be communicated during the prize-awarding ceremony, which will take place on 2 June 2020 in Beirut, marking the 15th memorial of Samir Kassir’s assassination.
Posts Tagged ‘regional award’
Call for nominations for Samir Kassir Award for Freedom of the Press goes ahead in MENA region
February 28, 2020Nansen Refugee Award Regional Winners for 2019 are…
September 18, 2019On 18 September UNHCR announced the five 2019 Nansen Refugee Award Regional Winners. For more on the Nansen Award and 8 more awards in the refugee area, see: http://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/awards/unhcr-nansen-refugee-award.
These are the every-day heroes going to extraordinary lengths to help forcibly displaced people in great need, who have been chosen as the regional winners of the UNHCR 2019 Nansen Refugee Award. The regional winners for Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and the Middle East were short-listed from more than 450 nominees.
They are:
- Africa: Evariste Mfaume, the founder of NGO Solidarité des Volontaires pour l’Humanité in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, who champions the rights of Congolese people displaced by conflict and also refugees and their host communities.
- Americas: Bianka Rodriguez from El Salvador, a young trans woman and executive director of NGO COMCAVIS TRANS, who advocates for the rights of forcibly displaced LGBTI people in the country.
- Asia: Alberto Cairo, a physiotherapist in Afghanistan and head of the International Committee of the Red Cross orthopaedic programme, who has dedicated almost 30 years of his life to providing prosthetic limbs and helping find jobs for injured Afghans.
- Europe: Humanitarian Corridors, a ground-breaking cross-border initiative established with the Italian Government in 2015 to enable particularly vulnerable refugees to start a new life in safety in Italy.
- Middle East: Abeer Khreisha, a community volunteer in Jordan, known as ‘the mother of Syrians’ for her work helping refugees.
The overall winner of the Nansen Refugee Award – who is not among those honoured today – will be revealed on 2 October in Geneva. For last year’s winner see: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2018/10/02/south-sudanese-doctor-wins-2018-nansen-medal/
Magsaysay Awards 2019 honor 5 outstanding Asians
August 3, 2019
The Ramon Magsaysay Award, one of Asia’s best known prizes, celebrates transformative leadership. In the past five decades, the award has been bestowed on over three hundred men, women and organizations whose selfless service has offered their societies, Asia, and the world successful solutions to some of the most intractable problems of human development. For more on this regional award, see: http://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/awards/ramon-magsaysay-award-for-community-leadership] The trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation annually select the awardees. The Award is presented to them in formal ceremonies in Manila, Philippines on August 31st, the birth anniversary of the much-esteemed Philippine President whose ideals inspired the Award’s creation in 1957.
The winners for 2019 are:
Kim, Jong-ki, South Korea
- In 1995, Kim Jong-ki was a highly successful businessman handling market operations in China for a giant Korean electronics company. Married, with a son and daughter, he was at the height of his career when tragedy struck.
- In the year his son died, Jong-ki established the Foundation for Preventing Youth Violence (FPYV), the first organized effort in South Korea to address school violence as a systemic social problem affecting students, families, schools, and the community-at-large.
- The impact of Jong-ki and FPYV on Korean society has been profound, establishing a nationwide presence and creating collective action on a social problem hitherto neglected.
- In electing Kim Jong-ki to receive the 2019 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes his quiet courage in transforming private grief into a mission to protect Korea’s youth from the scourge of bullying and violence, his unstinting dedication to the goal of instilling among the young the values of self-esteem, tolerance, and mutual respect, and his effectively mobilising all sectors of the country in a nationwide drive that has transformed both policy and behaviours towards building a gentler, non-violent society.
Kumar, Ravish, India
- In 1996, he joined New Delhi Television Network (NDTV), one of India’s leading TV networks and worked his way up from being a field reporter. After NDTV launched its 24-hour Hindi-language news channel — NDTV India — targeting the country’s 422 million native speakers of Hindi, he was given his own daily show, “Prime Time.”
- As an anchor, Ravish is sober, incisive, and well-informed. He does not dominate his guests but affords them the chance to express themselves. He does not balk, however, at calling the highest officials to account or criticizing media and the state of public discourse in the country; for this reason, he has been harassed and threatened by rabid partisans of one kind or another.
- Ravish has been most vocal on insisting that the professional values of sober, balanced, fact-based reporting be upheld in practice.
- In electing Ravish Kumar to receive the 2019 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes his unfaltering commitment to a professional, ethical journalism of the highest standards; his moral courage in standing up for truth, integrity, and independence; and his principled belief that it is in giving full and respectful voice to the voiceless, in speaking truth bravely yet soberly to power, that journalism fulfills its noblest aims to advance democracy.
Neelapaijit, Angkhana, Thailand
- In 2006, with the help of non-government organizations and her own family, Angkhana founded Justice for Peace Foundation (JPF), a network of human rights and peace advocates that has done important work in documenting the human rights situation in southern Thailand, thus raising public awareness and putting pressure on government to act on human rights cases, providing legal assistance to victims; and training women on human rights and the peace process.
- In 2015, Angkhana was named commissioner of the National Human Rights Commission of Thailand, the only Commission member with grassroots human rights experience.
- In her soft-spoken and measured tone she asserts: “Most women experience conflict and violence in a different way than men.
- In electing Angkhana Neelapaijit to receive the 2019 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes her unwavering courage in seeking justice for her husband and many other victims of violence and conflict in southern Thailand; her systematic, unflagging work to reform a flawed and unfair legal system, and the shining proof she is that the humblest ordinary person can achieve national impact in deterring human rights abuses.
Ko Swe Win, Myanmar
- Such a journalist is 41-year-old Ko Swe Win. Born to a poor family in Yangon, he grew up in politically turbulent times and fell victim to state repression early on.
- In 2017, he criticized a powerful, ultranationalist Buddhist monk, Ashin Wirathu, for purveying “hate speech” and publicly commending the killer of a Muslim human rights activist. Wirathu, Swe Win wrote, had desecrated Buddhism and should be punished for endorsing assassination and fomenting hate.
- Swe Win and Myanmar Now draw strength from the fact that they are making a difference. With a current readership of 350,000, the news service is highly regarded for the quality, balance, and depth of its reporting on high-impact issues, including land grabbing, child labor, and abuse of domestic workers.
- In electing Ko Swe Win to receive the 2019 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership, the board of trustees recognizes his undaunted commitment to practice independent, ethical, and socially engaged journalism in Myanmar; his incorruptible sense of justice and unflinching pursuit of the truth in crucial but under-reported issues; and his resolute insistence that it is in the quality and force of media’s truth-telling that we can convincingly protect human rights in the world. [see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2017/09/03/myanmar-time-for-aung-san-suu-kyi-to-return-at-least-some-of-her-many-human-rights-awards/]
The fifth award winner is Mr Cayabyab, 65, who was recognised for “his compositions and performances that have defined and inspired Filipino popular music across generations”.
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German Africa Prize goes to Kenyan Ushahidi IT pioneer
April 7, 2019The winner of the 2019 German Africa Prize is Juliana Rotich, founder of software project Ushahidi, which was introduced to monitor violence in Kenya following the 2007 general elections.
Juliana Rotich became known in professional circles in 2007 as the co-founder of the open source platform Ushahidi (a Swahili word meaning ‘testimony’), which began in Kenya as an internet platform developed to map reports of post-election violence and which went on to revolutionize the international flow of data and information.
A 16-member independent jury selected Rotich from a list of 18 African nominees. The 42-year-old was informed at a meeting on Thursday 4 April 2019 at the German embassy in Nairobi, attended by Deputy Ambassador Michael Derus and the General Secretary of the German Africa Foundation, Ingo Badoreck. The award pays tribute to the Kenyan entrepreneur not only for her business achievements and technological innovations but also for her outstanding sense of social responsibility. For more on this another regional awards for Africa see: http://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/awards/german-africa-award]
In an interview with DW in 2013, Rotich explained the philosophy behind Ushahidi: “One of the things that we are doing is that we have a partnership with civil society organizations, peace networks and youth networks. And these are organizations that are doing peace work in terms of messaging and encouraging the population to be peaceful and to conduct themselves in a peaceful way. So in that respect we are part of a partnership. Ushahidi’s key role in this partnership is the technology. And this is the crowdsourcing technology that allows people to report but also provides a way for digital humanitarians to volunteer and help to sift through the information, categorize it and make it available on the website.“
Today Ushahidi is used in over 160 countries as a tool for crisis response and for independent election monitoring, for example in Nigeria and Afghanistan. It has also been used following natural disasters in Chile, Haiti and New Zealand. Juliana Rotich is regarded as one of the leading figures of the digital revolution in Africa and beyond.
From Ushahidi she went on to found BRCK, an innovative technology company which is now the biggest Wi-Fi provider in sub-Saharan Africa. The central product is a battery-operated modem which can function for up to eight hours without electrical power. It is used in 150 countries.
See also: https://www.huridocs.org/2018/09/tools-for-human-rights-documentation-our-2018-snapshot/
Call for Nominations for the African Human Rights Defenders Shield Awards
January 11, 2019The Pan-African Human Rights Defenders Network has re-opened nominations for the 3rd edition of the African Human Rights Defenders Shield Awards. The award will honor exceptional individuals who have contributed to changes in their community by peacefully promoting and protecting human rights. See: http://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/awards/african-human-rights-defenders-shield-awards.
Six awards will be presented:
– Pan-African Shield Award (Overall);
– East and Horn of Africa Shield Award;
– West African Shield Award;
– Southern Africa Shield Award;
– Central Africa Shield Award;
– Northern Africa Shield Award.
To make a nomination please fill out one of the online forms below. Nominations will be open until 15 March 2019. Both individuals and organizations are eligible for the award. Nominations made during the previous nomination period (June to September 2018) are still valid and will be automatically taken into consideration for the 3rd edition of the Awards without need to re-apply. The awards will be presented to the winners at the margins of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights 64th Ordinary Session 2019.
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PS Note that the name of the awards has changed by adding the word “shield” (see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2014/09/04/call-for-nominations-2014-african-human-rights-defenders-awards/)
https://africandefenders.org/hrd-award/
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Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Awards 2014 to Juan Mendez, Mesoamerican Women Human Rights Defenders and Colibri
October 17, 2014Pamela Constable describes with passion in the Washington Post of 14 October 14 the work of the Colibri Center for Human Rights in Tucson as recipient of one of the three Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Awards of 2014. The other awards go to veteran international human rights lawyer Juan Mendez and Mesoamerican Women Human Rights Defenders, a nonprofit based in Mexico City that assists women in Mexico and Central America who are involved in defending social and human rights. Juan E. Mendez, 69, is a well-known human rights defender and now U.N. special rapporteur on torture human rights official. He was born in Argentina, jailed for defending political prisoners and then exiled after an international campaign. He worked for many years for human rights NGOs, especially Human Rights Watch.
The regional awards, given by the Institute for Policy Studies, are named for the two victims of a 1976 car bombing in which former Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier and his American assistant Ronni Moffitt were assassinated by agents of Chile’s military regime.
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 