CITY OF NUREMBERG NAMED LAUREATE
OF UNESCO PRIZE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS EDUCATION 2000
Paris, December 8 (No.2000-136)
- UNESCO Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura has named the German city of
Nuremberg laureate of this year’s UNESCO Prize for Human Rights Education on
the recommendation of an international jury that met in Paris on November 27 and
28.
Nuremberg is the 12th laureate
of the US$10,000 Prize since it was created in 1978 and is rewarded for its
determination to become a “City of Peace and Human Rights”. Nuremberg’s
contributions to the promotion of human rights include: the creation of a Human
Rights Documentation Centre; the Nuremberg International Human Rights Award,
whose laureate this year is the Mexican Samuel Ruiz García, former bishop of
Chiapas; and an International Human Rights Film Festival which first took place
last year and is to be held every two years.
Three Honourable Mentions were
also awarded. The first goes to Colombian anthropologist Flor Alba Romero for
her human rights education work with street children, prisoners and refugee
families. Another Honourable Mention goes to UNESCO’s Associated Schools
Project (ASPnet) in Pakistan, notably for its development of human rights
teaching material. The Japanese non-governmental organisation HURIGHTS OSAKA
also receives an Honourable Mention in recognition of its human rights education
activities in the Asia Pacific region, notably in research, and its extensive
publishing.
Awarded every two years, the
UNESCO Prize for Human Rights Education was created on the occasion of the 30th
anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - to encourage and
reward an institution, organisation or individual for their contribution to the
development of human rights education. Recent laureates have been: Justice
Michael Kirby of the High Court of Australia in 1998; Jean Bertrand Aristide, in
1996 after he stepped down as president of Haiti; the Philippine Commission of
Human Rights and Chilean academic José Zalaquett Daher, in 1994; the Arab
Institute of Human Rights (Tunisia) in 1992; Czech politician Václav Havel in
1990.
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