The Right Livelihood Award — known as the “Alternative Nobel” — was yesterday awarded to environmental campaigners from Kenya and Cambodia, a human rights defender from Ghana and a humanitarian group that rescues migrants in the Mediterranean Sea.
This year’s laureates “stand up to save lives, preserve nature and safeguard the dignity and livelihoods of communities around the world,” the award foundation said, adding that they “fight for people’s right to health, safety, a clean environment and democracy.”
This year’s prize went to Phyllis Omido from Kenya, and the groups Mother Nature Cambodia and SOS Mediterranee. They will share a cash prize, but for security reasons its size cannot be disclosed, the foundation said. The honorary award was given to Eunice Brookman-Amissah from Ghana.
Photo: AFP
“They care for their land and each human life connected to it: be it indigenous communities or people risking their lives to get to safety,” Ole von Uexkull, the head of the Stockholm-based Right Livelihood foundation, said in a statement.
The Cambodian advocacy group was cited for its “fearless and engaging activism to preserve Cambodia’s natural environment in the context of a highly restricted democratic space,” while the non-profit charity that operates in international waters north of Libya was credited with carrying out “life-saving humanitarian search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean Sea.”
Kenyan grassroots environmental activist Omido received the award “for her groundbreaking struggle to secure land and environmental rights for local communities while advancing the field of environmental law,” it said.
Brookman-Amissah was honored “for pioneering discussions on women’s reproductive rights in Africa, paving the way for liberalized abortion laws and improved safe abortion access,” it said.
This year, there were 170 nominees from 68 countries, it said. The laureates are to be recognized at an award presentation in Stockholm on Nov. 29. Created in 1980, the annual Right Livelihood Award honors efforts that the prize founder, Swedish-German philanthropist Jakob von Uexkull, felt were being ignored by the Nobel Prizes.
To date, 190 laureates from 74 countries have received the award.
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