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.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) greetings with what appeared to be restrained rhetoric that comes as Pyongyang moves closer to Russia and depends less on its long-time Asian ally. Kim wished “the Chinese people greater success in building a modern socialist country,” in a reply message to Xi for his congratulations on North Korea’s birthday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. The 190-word dispatch had little of the florid language that had been a staple of their correspondence, which has declined significantly this year, an analysis by Seoul-based specialist service NK Pro showed. It said
On an island of windswept tundra in the Bering Sea, hundreds of miles from mainland Alaska, a resident sitting outside their home saw — well, did they see it? They were pretty sure they saw it — a rat. The purported sighting would not have gotten attention in many places around the world, but it caused a stir on Saint Paul Island, which is part of the Pribilof Islands, a birding haven sometimes called the “Galapagos of the north” for its diversity of life. That is because rats that stow away on vessels can quickly populate and overrun remote islands, devastating bird
‘CLOSER TO THE END’: The Ukrainian leader said in an interview that only from a ‘strong position’ can Ukraine push Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘to stop the war’ Decisive actions by the US now could hasten the end of the Russian war against Ukraine next year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after telling ABC News that his nation was “closer to the end of the war.” “Now, at the end of the year, we have a real opportunity to strengthen cooperation between Ukraine and the United States,” Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram after meeting with a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress. “Decisive action now could hasten the just end of Russian aggression against Ukraine next year,” he wrote. Zelenskiy is in the US for the UN
A 64-year-old US woman took her own life inside a controversial suicide capsule at a Swiss woodland retreat, with Swiss police on Tuesday saying several people had been arrested. The space-age looking Sarco capsule, which fills with nitrogen and causes death by hypoxia, was used on Monday outside a village near the German border. The portable human-sized pod, self-operated by a button inside, has raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland. Active euthanasia is banned in the country, but assisted dying has been legal for decades. On the same day it was used, Swiss Department of Home