2006 WOMEN'S RIGHTS PRIZE RECIPIENTS

Union Nacional de Mujeres Guatemaltecas (UNAMG)
Sweatshop Watch
Cecilia Medina Quiroga

Luz Méndez for the Unión Nacional de Mujeres Guatemaltecas (UNAMG)

Founded in 1980, UNAMG is one of the oldest women’s rights organizations in Guatemala and was forced to operate in exile overseas for many years due to political repression in Guatemala. Luz Méndez has been at the forefront of the reconstruction of UNAMG since it resumed work in Guatemala in 1996.

It’s dangerous work. In June this year Amnesty International reported that UNAMG has been the subject of raids where confidential information has been stolen. An Amnesty statement “fears for the safety” of individuals involved in women’s rights organizations in Guatemala.

Luz Méndez is currently President of the Advisory Council to the Unión Nacional de Mujeres Guatemaltecas. She was formerly coordinator of the union, which promotes women’s rights and gender equitable political participation in Guatemala.

Previously, from 1991 to 1996, Méndez participated in the Guatemalan peace negotiations following years of civil war and was one of the few women at the negotiating table. She advocated the incorporation of women’s rights into the Peace Accords and has worked to implement the Accords.

The official citation from the Peter Gruber Foundation celebrates Méndez and the UNAMG for their “tireless work in ensuring women’s leadership in peace-building and equitable political participation in Guatemala”.

In addition to her work with UNAMG, Méndez has been a member of the advisory group of the Independent Experts’ Assessment on Women, War and Peace, a study supported by the UN Development Fund for Women, and a member of the advisory council of the Global Fund for Women. Having pursued higher education in gender studies and business administration, she earned a master’s degree in public administration as a Mason fellow at Harvard University’s John F Kennedy School of Government in 2004. She has also been involved in advocating for the inclusion of women in peace processes around the world.

Méndez was one of the speakers during the first meeting the UN Security Council held with women’s representatives, which preceded the approval of the SC Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security.

Julie Su for Sweatshop Watch

US attorney Julie Su, Litigation Director for the Asian Pacific American Legal Center of Southern California, is a co-founder of Sweatshop Watch, a California-based organization committed to:
• eliminating the exploitation that occurs in sweatshops;
• eliminating the illegal and inhumane conditions that characterize sweatshops;
• encouraging corporations to accept responsibility for the places where their products are made.

Sweatshop Watch is a coalition of labor, community, civil rights, immigrant rights, women's, religious and student organizations, and individuals.

Over the past decade, Sweatshop Watch, in collaboration with the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, has brought cases on behalf of hundreds of low-wage, immigrant, often undocumented women in the garment industry, against major corporations who use sweatshops to manufacture the garments they sell. These workers are all Latino or Asian immigrants.

They have launched several public policy advocacy campaigns including ones to hold manufacturers and retailers responsible for the working conditions of the women and men who make the clothes they sell.

Su, a graduate of Stanford and Harvard universities, became a champion for the rights of immigrant sweatshop employees after defending 72 Thai garment workers who were discovered working behind barbed wire and under armed guard in 1995 following a raid on a California sweatshop. Su represented them in their successful fight for compensation from the manufacturers and retailers for whom they sewed and in obtaining legal immigration status in the U.S.

The official citation recognizes Su and Sweatshop Watch, “for giving visibility and voice to the economic and political rights of migrant and undocumented workers in the United States.”

Cecilia Medina Quiroga

Chilean judge the Honorable Cecilia Medina Quiroga is one of the most prominent human rights jurists in Latin America.

The only woman judge on the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which works to apply and interpret the American Convention on Human Rights, Medina Quiroga has also spent eight years as a member of the Human Rights Committee of the UN. While chairing the committee in 2000, she authored its groundbreaking general comment 28 on Article 3 of the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights dealing with the equal rights of men and women. The comment calls for nations to not only adopt measures of protection, but also to take positive measures so as to achieve the effective and equal empowerment of women.

Today Quiroga is working to educate lawyers in human rights law and the way women’s human rights should be integrated in the mainstream of international law. She organizes a postgraduate course for lawyers on women's human rights at the Human Rights Center of the Faculty of Law, University of Chile. She is also working to apply these ideals at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

With a master’s degree from the University of Chile and a doctorate in law from the University of Utrecht in Holland, Medina Quiroga has lectured widely on human rights law, including in Chile – where she is a Professor at the Faculty of Law at the University of Chile, the US – at Harvard Law School where she was a visiting Professor, and in Holland and Sweden. Medina Quiroga was born in Conception, Chile, in 1935.

The official citation celebrates Medina Quiroga for “advancing the rights of women through the framework of international law.”

THE CITATION

In recognition of their important contributions in the ongoing struggle for women’s rights in the Americas – South, Central and North –the 2006 Women’s Rights Prize of the Peter Gruber Foundation is proudly presented to Luz Méndez for the Unión Nacional de Mujeres Guatemaltecas; to Julie Su for Sweatshop Watch; and to the Honorable Cecilia Medina Quiroga.

In awarding this prize, the Foundation celebrates:

Luz Méndez and the Unión Nacional de Mujeres Guatemaltecas, the organization of which she is a founder, for their tireless work in ensuring women’s leadership in peace-building and equitable political participation in Guatemala;

Julie Su, a public interest lawyer, and Sweatshop Watch, the organization of which she is a founder, for giving visibility and voice to the economic and political rights of migrant and undocumented workers in the United States; and

The Honorable Cecilia Medina Quiroga of Chile, the only woman judge on the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, for advancing the rights of women through the framework of international law.

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2005 WOMEN'S RIGHTS PRIZE RECIPIENTS

Shan Women's Action Network
and
The Women's League of Burma

The two organizations receiving the 2005 Women’s Rights Prize are distinct but share much history; the groups overlap in purpose, goals and some membership. Both were founded in reaction to the oppression of minority women of Burma.

Shan Women's Action Network

The Shan State of Burma, bordering China, Laos and Thailand, is home to ethnic Shan who make up approximately 9 percent of Burma’s diverse population of 43 million people. Since the mid-1990s, civil unrest and brutal treatment by the Burmese military have forced an estimated 300,000 people out of Shan State and into Thailand where they have no legal status. For many women, this translates into a sentence of servitude in Thai brothels, debt bondage and the ever-present danger of physical violence.

A group of Shan women active in Thailand and along the Thai-Burma border founded the Shan Women’s Action Network (SWAN) in March of 1999 to help supply basic services to women and girls and to promote peace and freedom.

SWAN’s projects include operating 12 schools that provide basic literacy skills; a nursery; a community health clinic and outreach education about AIDS and sexually transmitted disease; crisis support for victims of rape and other abuse, including emergency assistance for food, clothing, shelter and medical attention; training workshops teaching leadership skills and providing information about gender issues and democracy; and documenting problems and raising awareness nationally and internationally.

In 2002, SWAN published License to Rape, a report that detailed the cases of 625 women and girls in Shan State who were victims of rape and/or other sexual violence, perpetrated by members of the Burmese military, mostly between 1996 and 2001. The report drew international attention and widespread condemnation of the actions it documented. Since its release, SWAN representatives have appeared at the United Nations and in various forums in Europe, Asia, America and Australia to denounce the military’s use of sexual violence and label the actions war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The Burmese regime denies it allows the military to rape or otherwise abuse its citizens with impunity and has charged that SWAN’s report is false; the state-run Burmese media accused the women of SWAN of being terrorists and drug-traffickers. And the Burmese government pressured Thailand to crack down on the organization. It now operates underground, its members keeping a low profile, ready to move the office on short notice – which it has been forced to do several times – and still working to be recognized as a legal entity in Thailand.

SWAN is a founding member of the Women’s League of Burma.

The Women's League of Burma

Founded in December 1999, the Women’s League of Burma is an umbrella organization comprising 12 organizations representing various ethnic groups in Burma. Its mission is “to work for women’s empowerment and advancement of the status of women, and to work for the increased participation of women in all spheres of society in the democracy movement, and in peace and national reconciliation processes through capacity building, advocacy, research and documentation.”

Its member organizations are:

Burmese Women’s Union
Kachin Women’s Association-Thailand
Karen Women’s Organization
Karenni National Women’s Organization
Kuki Women’s Human Rights Organization
Lahu Women’s Organization
Palaung Women’s Organization
Pa-O Women’s Union
Rakhaing Women’s Union
Shan Women’s Action Network
Tavoy Women’s Union
Women’s Rights and Welfare Association of Burma

The WLB encourages cooperation among the different groups to build trust, solidarity and mutual understanding among the many nationalities of Burma and to present a united front in the effort to protect and empower women. It aids member groups with their relief work, research and education.

The League serves women within Burma as well as those who have fled to nearby countries. It acts as a conduit between grassroots organizations and the international community, especially through the United Nations.

The WLB and its members have published many reports, including Burma: The Current State of Women in Conflict Areas and Breaking the Silence. It also translated into Burmese the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 which, in part, “calls upon all parties to armed conflict to respect fully international law applicable to the rights and protection of women and girls as civilians” and encourages “an increase in the participation of women at decision-making levels in conflict resolution and peace processes.”

THE CITATION

“The Women’s Rights Prize of the Peter Gruber Foundation is hereby proudly presented to SWAN, the Shan Women’s Action Network, and the Women’s League of Burma, an association of eleven women’s groups, which SWAN helped to establish in 1999. In awarding this prize, the Foundation celebrates the unique accomplishments of a group of young women leaders who, at great personal risk, are challenging human rights violations under a repressive military dictatorship. Their groundbreaking report, License to Rape, brought to world attention the systematic sexual abuse of Shan women, an ethnic minority in Burma. SWAN works with refugee women, many of who are trafficked into Thailand and remain vulnerable to violence, disease, and continued assaults upon their human dignity. The Women’s Rights Prize also honors the Women’s League of Burma, an umbrella group that provides a forum and the resources for small grassroots women’s organizations that work tirelessly to assist and educate Burmese refugees, regardless of their ethnicity.”

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2004 WOMEN'S RIGHTS PRIZE RECIPIENTS


Sakena Yacoobi
and the
Afghan Institute of Learning (AIL)

Sakena Yacoobi

The odds of a man in Afghanistan learning to read are roughly 3 to 1 against him. For a woman, they are 5 to 1, or worse.

Sakena Lida Yacoobi not only beat the odds, she has spent much of her life trying to improve them for others.

When she left her native Herat, Afghanistan, to attend college in California, she was the first in her family to pursue higher education. She received her Bachelor of Arts Degree in Biological Sciences in 1977 from the University of the Pacific, Stockton, California, thus becoming the first woman from her hometown to earn a degree in the United States. Then she went on to achieve a Master’s Degree in Public Health from Loma Linda University, California, in 1981.

Her early work was as a health consultant and teacher in the U.S. She provided family therapy to private patients and counseled individuals on a wide range of health issues. As a professor at D’Etre University in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, she taught biology, mathematics and psychology.

Back home, the Soviet Union had invaded Afghanistan, turning millions of people into refugees, including Prof. Yacoobi’s parents. She helped them immigrate to the United States, and in 1992 she began her work with Afghan refugees living in Pakistan. She joined the International Rescue Committee as manager, and later coordinator, of its Female Education and Teacher Training Program in Peshawar, Pakistan.

Recognizing the need to involve Afghans in the process and to respect both religion and custom, Prof. Yacoobi established a grassroots program within IRC and within a year had quadrupled the number of Afghan girls enrolled in school. The program also trained the first female teacher trainers, with the dual goal of improving education overall and of increasing girls’ and women’s access to education. With a staff of 680 people, she managed five women’s programs serving 17,000 refugees in the areas of primary education, health education, pre-school education, English language training and computer and office training.

Then the Soviet war in Afghanistan ended and IRC’s involvement wound down, so in 1995 Prof. Yacoobi founded the Afghan Institute of Learning to continue the work and to expand it into Afghanistan.

Under her direction as president and executive director, AIL quickly grew to be one of the largest women-led, non-governmental organizations in the country. With a staff of 470 people, more than 80 percent of them women, AIL annually provides health and education services to 350,000 Afghans in Pakistan and in the Afghan cities of Kabul, Herat and Mir Bacha Kot. During the Taliban years, AIL ran 80 underground schools as well as mobile libraries in four Afghan cities. By the end of 2003 the organization served more than 350,000 Afghan women and girls in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s refugee camps through its girls schools and programs in teacher training, health education, human rights education, women’s leadership training, and literacy. With its 470 employees, 83% of whom are women, it is a model and a leader in rebuilding Afghan civil society.

The NGO operates Women’s Learning Centers where women can receive health care and where they participate in educational, health, human rights and skills training classes. It also supports home literacy classes and educational institutions from preschools through secondary schools and recently opened a women’s university in Afghanistan.

AIL has been recognized by the international community for its success, receiving the Bill Graham Award from the Rex Foundation and the Peacemakers in Action Award from the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding.

In explaining why she is driven to continue her work, Prof. Yacoobi said, “I am reminded of the children in Peshawar when they first come to school. In their eyes I see fear, sadness, and hopelessness. But in just a few weeks, the same children are standing taller, laughing and playing with smiles across their faces. . . . When you make education available to the Afghan children, it is like giving them new life and hope for the future.”

Prof. Yacoobi is also vice president of Creating Hope International, an NGO headquartered in Dearborn, Michigan. She has traveled extensively, lecturing and participating in forums on various issues related to her work empowering women. Among her more recent engagements, she was a delegate to the United Nations Millennium Forum for NGOs in New York in 2000, a delegate to the Roundtable on Women’s Leadership in Rebuilding Afghanistan sponsored by UNIFEM and the Belgian government in Brussels in 2001, an NGO delegate to the U N Population Fund Conference on Gender Violence in Slovaki in 2002; and a panelist at the International Institute on Peace Education in Seoul, Korea in 2003.

THE CITATION

“The Women’s Rights Prize of the Peter Gruber Foundation is hereby proudly presented to Sakena Yacoobi, President of the Afghan Institute of Learning, for her courageous vision and leadership in implementing quality education, human rights training, and safe healthcare for Afghan women and children. Despite significant personal risk during the time of the Taliban and in the aftermath of violence and war, she has worked tirelessly to improve the life, opportunities, and social infrastructure of Afghanistan’s neediest residents and its refugees in Pakistan.”

“The Women’s Rights Prize of the Peter Gruber Foundation is hereby proudly presented to the Afghan Institute of Learning for expanding health and education opportunities for women and children in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The unwavering commitment of its dedicated teachers, doctors, and health care providers under the repressive Taliban regime and during post-war reconstruction has truly empowered hundreds of thousands of Afghan women and children, citizens and refugees alike.”

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2003 WOMEN'S RIGHTS PRIZE RECIPIENTS

Judge Navanethem Pillay
and
Pro-Femmes Twese Hamwe

Judge Navanethem Pillay

Born in South Africa in 1941, Judge Navanethem Pillay has been both a symbol and a standard-bearer for women's rights in her country, in the region, and throughout the world.

She received her Bachelor of Arts and her Bachelor of Law degrees from Natal University in South Africa and later a Master of Law and Doctor of Juridical Science at Harvard University, U.S.A.

She opened her law practice in 1967 - the first woman to do so in Natal Province. As senior partner in the firm, she represented many opponents of apartheid, and became such a threat to the apartheid regime that she was denied a passport for many years. She handled precedent-setting cases to establish the effects of solitary confinement, the right of political prisoners to due process, and the family violence syndrome as a defense.

In 1995 came another first - she was the first black woman attorney appointed acting judge of the Supreme Court of South Africa. On the heels of that appointment, Judge Pillay was elected by the United Nations General Assembly to be a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, where she served for eight years, including several years as president. During her tenure, the ICTR rendered a judgment against Jean-Paul Akayesu, mayor of Taba commune in Rwanda, finding him guilty of genocide for the use of rape in the "destruction of the spirit, of the will to live and of life itself."

As Judge Pillay said in an Occasional Paper she delivered in 2002, the jurisprudence on gender issues emanating from the UN criminal tribunals both in Rwanda and in the former Yugoslavia "provides a precedent in the ways in which international and regional bodies view and treat sexual violence." The evidence coming out of these trials so horrified the world community that in 1998 the Statute for the International Criminal Court became the first international treaty "to recognize a range of acts of sexual and gender violence as among the most serious crimes under international law. Most of these crimes had never before been explicitly articulated as crimes in any international instrument or domestic criminal code."

In February 2003, Judge Pillay was elected by the Assembly of State Parties to the Rome Statute, as one of the 18 Judges of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Judge Pillay's commitment to human rights and to women's issues extends beyond her work on the bench. She is currently honorary chair for Equality Now and serves on the Board of Directors for Nozala Investments, the women's component of the National Economic Initiative. She has also held key positions with the Women Lawyers Association, the Advice desk for Abused Women, Lawyers for Human Rights, the Women's National Coalition, Black Lawyers Association and many other groups. She also lectures widely on legal and social issues of equality and human rights.

Judge Pillay received awards from the IBA for outstanding international woman lawyer, from the National Bar Association for excellence in the pursuit of human rights and was elected honorary member of the American Society of International Law.

A widow, Judge Pillay has two daughters, Isvari Pather and Kamini Pillay.

THE CITATION