Thank you to everyone who joined Global Exchange at our 9th Annual Human Rights Awards June 1, 2011.
The 2011 Human Rights Awards Honorees:
People’s Choice Honoree: Javier Sicilia is a Mexican father, poet, and citizen who lost his son in a drug war massacre on March 28, 2011. Juan Francisco Sicilia Ortega was murdered along with six friends in an act of violence that Morelos state authorities immediately dismissed as “a settling of accounts.” Juan Francisco and his friends’ murders took place in the context of more than 38,000 mostly nameless victims of this cruel and unnecessary war.
Rather than retreat to the shadows of shock or fear, Sicilia has turned the pain of his searing loss into a tool for peace by convening marches and building a movement to free Mexico from the dogmas, dark alliances, impunity, and political expediency that fuel this tragic war.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_CiKzttxMQ
More than 1200 people selected Javier to be Global Exchange’s “People’s Choice” human rights award winner because of the leadership he brings to a country hungry for voices of authentic change. The award honors his work to weave together a broad movement rooted in Mexico’s best traditions while calling on all of the participants of Mexico’s bloody war — criminals, police, army soldiers and officers, bankers, weapons dealers, and political officials alike — to do their part to end the violence.
Domestic Honoree Wilma Subra’s career as a chemist required that she travel extensively throughout the country, conducting tests on behalf of corporations. Often times, she found information about potential hazards to the communities she visited, but the restrictions of her position prevented her from sharing what she found. As time passed, she found it difficult to reconcile her silence with what she knew to be right.
Finally, she decided she could no longer work for the corporations doing so much harm to so many. So, she went into business for the people–forming the Subra Company, to provide testing and knowledge on behalf of Louisiana citizens in the fight to protect their lives and livelihoods. Bringing her expertise in chemistry and microbiology to bear, Wilma now provides scientific evidence for communities to back up their claims when it comes time to go toe to toe with corporate criminals.
She has worked with communities impacted by natural gas drilling in Texas is and Wyoming, has helped communities living near polluted shipyards in San Francisco, and covered the potential impacts of importing Italian nuclear waste through New Orleans. She has trained people in rural areas in techniques for monitoring the health of the communities in which they live — gathering data on air quality and the impact of harmful emissions.
In 1999, Wilma received a MacArthur Genius Grant for her work protecting communities, and she served as vice-chair of the EPA National Advisory Council for Environmental Policy and Technology (NACEPT). In every capacity, at every turn, she has used her expertise and quiet diligence to help communities in need and spread the word about industry abuses.
Following the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico resulting from the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, Wilma has been on the frontlines of the struggle for truth. B.P. has consistently claimed that there is no more danger, but Wilma has been relentless in exposing the disastrous reality: oil coating the bottom of the ocean, oil continuing to wash up on shore, oil destroying the life cycles of countless organisms. The challenge of responding to the Gulf oil spill is massive, but Wilma is undeterred. She will continue as she has for the past thirty years: putting her expertise to work, battling a toxic industry with public good.
International Honoree: Pablo Solón, Bolivian Ambassador to the United Nations, confronts the challenge of climate change with a set of priorities and principles that often places him at odds with the rubber stamp diplomats of other nations. The message from Mr. Solón calls for addressing the root causes of the climate change crisis, creating binding agreements and climate debt repayment mechanisms, and developing a framework for holistic, systemic change.
If he seems a little different than your typical diplomat, perhaps it’s because of his background. Prior to his work representing Bolivia to the United Nations, Mr. Solón was an activist, working with indigenous people’s movements, workers’ unions, student associations, and human rights organizations.
He brings this framework to his role as Bolivia’s representative to the U.N. climate negotiations, putting pressure on the countries most responsible for climate change to own up to their role in the crisis by shouldering a fair share of the burden of paying for its effects.
Aside from his role in climate negotiations, Pablo Solón has emerged at the forefront of the movement to radically change the relationship between humankind and nature. At the conclusion of the People’s World Conference on Climate Change, the representatives assembled put forward a Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth. This document calls attention to the need to recognize the fundamental rights of nature, creating a new cultural and legal framework to protect natural ecosystems from harm.
In the Cancún rounds of the United Nations Climate Conference, Mr. Solón refused to sign the final accord, stating the document represented a giant step backwards, in that it replaced binding accords with voluntary pledges. In response to the U.S. Ambassador’s categorical rejection of climate debt repayment mechanisms, Mr. Solón had this to say:
“Admitting responsibility for the climate crisis without taking necessary actions to address it is like someone burning your house and then refusing to pay for it…In Bolivia we are facing a crisis we had no role in creating. Our glaciers dwindle, droughts become ever more common, and water supplies are drying up. Who should address this? To us it seems only right that the polluter should pay, and not the poor. We are not assigning guilt, merely responsibility. As they say in the US, if you break it, you buy it.”
About the Human Rights Awards
Global Exchange’s Human Rights Awards are grounded in our commitment to ensuring that the rights outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are respected and upheld by our world’s governments and private institutions. Since our founding in 1988, we have partnered with individuals and organizations throughout the world to educate people about threats to political, economic, social and environmental justice and to activate individuals and communities to confront these problems effectively. With these annual awards, Global Exchange recognizes the contributions of individuals and organizations defending human rights in their own countries and around the world.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html
