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Peter Prove, director of the WCC CCIA, moderating the seminar. © Peter Kenny/WCC

Peter Prove, director of the WCC CCIA, moderating the seminar. © Peter Kenny/WCC

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The Right Livelihood Award is seen as an “alternative Nobel Prize” and its laureates are often regarded as courageous people or organizations offering exemplary solutions to the root causes of global problems.

An interactive seminar, “Fostering Solidarity for Human Rights, Peace and Justice,” featuring several laureates of the award took place on 31 October at the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva.

The event was organized by the Right Livelihood Award Foundation, Lutheran World Federation (LWF) and World Council of Churches (WCC) and was moderated by Peter Prove, director of the WCC Commission of the Churches on International Affairs.

Among the panellists was Raji Sourani, director of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights who connected via Skype due to Israel not issuing him with travel documents enabling him to attend the event.

“We live in one of the biggest manmade disasters,” said Sourani who lives in the Palestinian area of Gaza. “We cannot move to the other parts of our state, and we cannot move to Israel.”

Gaza blockade

He said Israel’s blockade of Gaza is “illegal” and “criminal”, noting that that people in the area are unable to do any rebuilding since the last Israeli incursion into the area and that there are “ideal conditions for creating ISIS” there.

Others speakers at the event were: Ida Kuklina, secretary of the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers of Russia; Johan Galtung, founder of TRANSCEND International; Andraś Biró, founder of the Hungarian Foundation for Self-Reliance; Stephen Corry, director of Survival International and Victor Madrigal-Borloz, secretary-general of the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims.

Kuklina said Russia has not yet adjusted to the post-communist era since the collapse of the Soviet Union and that although the situation is not ideal under Vladimir Putin’s rule, “the people of Russia don’t want to make a new war.”

The event at the Ecumenical Centre was preceded by the first ever regional conference for European Right Livelihood Award laureates at the WCC’s Château de Bossey,

After Biró spoke at the Ecumenical Centre event, more than 20 Right Livelihood Award laureates called on Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán to end ethnic segregation, which often begins at school, and to implement affirmative action to compensate for past discrimination against the Roma.

The statement was made during the Bossey conference.

Roma rights

Bíró, received the award in 1995 for defending Roma rights in his native Hungary, where the Roma population is estimated at 700,000-800,000. He said: “The Roma community in Hungary is treated as if they were migrants, although they have lived there for centuries and carry Hungarian passports.

“While Hungary’s anti-refugee policy has received wide condemnation from the international community, the government’s ongoing discrimination against its own citizens has largely been ignored.”

Since 2010, the Hungarian government has systematically neglected segregation in school, which was met with protests from teachers and civil society activists.

“Half of all Roma children in Hungary today attend ethically segregated primary schools, leaving them semi-literate and with low employment prospects, thus reinforcing the vicious circle of poverty and exclusion.

“Only one in five Roma children is likely to receive a high school diploma, compared to four in five in the rest of the Hungarian population,” he said.

 

In 1980, journalist and professional philatelist Jakob von Uexkull felt that the Nobel Prize categories were too narrow in scope and too concentrated on the interests of the industrialised countries to be an adequate answer to the challenges now facing humanity.

Instead, he wanted to “recognize the efforts of those who are tackling these issues more directly, coming up with practical answers to challenges like the pollution of our air, soil and water; the danger of nuclear war; the abuse of basic human rights; the destitution and misery of the poor; and the over-consumption and spiritual poverty of the wealthy”.

The following laureates of the 2016 Right Livelihood Award were announced on 22 September in Stockholm, Sweden:

  • Syria Civil Defence (The White Helmets), ‘for their outstanding bravery, compassion and humanitarian engagement in rescuing civilians from the destruction of the Syrian civil war’. It is the first time that a Right Livelihood Award goes to a laureate from Syria.
  • Egypt’s Mozn Hassan and Nazra for Feminist Studies, ‘for asserting the equality and rights of women in circumstances where they are subject to ongoing violence, abuse and discrimination’.
  • Russia’s Svetlana Gannushkina, ‘for her decades-long commitment to promoting human rights and justice for refugees and forced migrants, and tolerance among different ethnic groups’.
  • Cumhuriyet, a leading independent newspaper in Turkey, ‘for their fearless investigative journalism and commitment to freedom of expression in the face of oppression, censorship, imprisonment and death threats.’

The Right Livelihood Award Foundation is a charity registered in Sweden with its head office in Stockholm. It is supported by the Church of Sweden, a member church of the WCC.

 

2016 Right Livelihood Award laureates

Right Livelihood Award Foundation

The Lutheran World Federation