Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg and the Fridays for Future youth movement on Monday received Amnesty International’s “Ambassadors of Conscience” award for their work highlighting the need for urgent action to avert climate disaster.
The 16-year-old, who is taking a year out of high school, received a standing ovation from students at The George Washington University in the US capital where the ceremony was held.
“The politics required to take on this crisis simply doesn’t exist today,” Thunberg said, standing on a step to reach the microphone.
Photo: AFP
“That is why every single one of us must push from every possible angle to hold those responsible accountable and to make the people in power act,” she said.
She added that the prize was not just for her, but the millions of youth who have taken part since last year in weekly school strikes held every Friday, inspired by the sit-in she began outside the Swedish parliament in August last year.
The next of these will be on Friday, a day when Thunberg and thousands of New York students are expected to pour into the streets as part of a “global climate strike” along with other protests around the world.
That will be followed on Saturday by the first Youth Climate Summit at the UN and the Climate Action Summit on Monday, which the UN chief has convened because the world’s biggest polluters remain woefully behind their greenhouse gas emissions targets.
Thunberg spoke on Monday about the “destruction” of the planet and the large-scale deaths that could come about as a result of climate change, water and air pollution and the destruction of food chains.
However, she said she also saw an “awakening.”
“Even though it is slow, the pace is picking up and the debate is shifting,” she said, before concluding: “See you on the street.”
She was joined on stage by several young American activists.
“They can’t just ignore us anymore,” said Jerome Foster, 17.
Earlier, Amnesty International secretary-general Kumi Naidoo said that the organization was originally not going to give out the prize this year, following the unprecedented decision to withdraw it from Aung San Suu Kyi late last year.
Amnesty rescinded the award from the Burmese leader for “the shameful betrayal of the values she once stood for” over her “apparent indifference” to the suffering of the Rohingya population.
However, Naidoo said he was swayed by the impact Thunberg and other youth activists had already achieved and could achieve in future, adding that the UK parliament declared a climate emergency after she met with British political leaders.
“The award is about acknowledging that they’ve already done something that many of us who’ve been involved for decades have not been able to do, they’ve been able to actually inspire a much larger number of people,” he said.
“These young, high school students are playing a very important role in educating their own parents,” he said.
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