2008 RIGHT LIVELIHOOD AWARD RECIPIENTS
COMMENTARY ARCHIVES, 12 Oct 2008
October 12, 2008
On October 1st the 2008 recipients of the Right Livelihood Award, which has come to be widely known as the “Alternative Nobel,” were announced. The five co-recipients were celebrated for "offering practical and exemplary answers to the most urgent challenges facing us today."
Recipients of the Award, first established in 1980, have included prominent individuals such as Vandana Shiva (1993), Waangari Maathai (1984), Daniel Ellsberg (2006), and founder of TRANSCEND Johan Galtung (1987) “for his systematic and multidisciplinary study of the conditions which can lead to peace.”
This year the Award was presented to Krishnammal Jagannathan and Sankaralingam Jagannathan / LAFTI (India), Amy Goodman (USA), Asha Hagi (Somalia), and Monika Hauser (Germany).
Krishnammal Jagannathan and Sankaralingam Jagannathan were prominent activists for the Gandhian movement for independence and, currently, for sustainable development and social reform in India. In 1981 the couple founded Land for Tillers’ Freedom (LAFTI), an organization that mediates between landlords and the landless poor. By 2007 LAFTI had transferred 13,000 acres of land to about 13,000 families through a land-purchase program.
The organization has also had a positive impact on improving the livelihood of many communities through sustainable human development. The Right Livelihood Award was presented to them “for two long lifetimes of work dedicated to realizing in practice the Gandhian vision of social justice and sustainable human development, for which they have been referred to as ‘India’s soul’.”
Amy Goodman is founder and co-host of Democracy Now!, a TV/radio/webstream alternative media program that offers what she calls “trickle up journalism.” Democracy Now! highlights grassroots perspectives to an otherwise corporatized mainstream media landscape in the United States.
Democracy Now! reaches millions of people worldwide daily and is widely respected for its fearless critique of social injustices, and for offering alternative voices that otherwise would be largely unheard. Amy Goodman received the Right Livelihood Award “for developing an innovative model of truly independent political journalism that brings to millions of people the alternative voices that are often excluded by the mainstream media.”
Asha Hagi, co-founder and current chair of Save Somali Women and Children (SSWC) has been esteemed for her tireless work in supporting women to overcome violence, poverty and marginalization in their communities in Somalia. In 2000 she, along with others, spearheaded the Sixth Clan to complement the traditional five male-dominated Somali Clans. It was the first Clan to represent women during the peace process in Somalia.
Her work continues today as Somalia still struggles to come to a sustainable peace. Asha Hagi was awarded the Right Livelihood Award this year “for continuing to lead at great personal risk the female participation in the peace and reconciliation process in her war-ravaged country.”
Monika Hauser has spent her career as a gynecologist and activist to help victims of sexual violence. In 1992, horrified by reports of the sexual violence inflicted on Bosnian women, she assembled a team of 20 Bosnian experts, collected funds, and established Medica Zenica, a women’s therapy center, in the middle of war-torn Bosnia. Out of this initial movement, Medica Mondiale was born, which “assists women and girls in war zones and areas of crisis, whose physical, psychological, social and political integrity has been violated.”
Monika Hauser received the Right Livelihood Award “for her tireless commitment to working with women who have experienced the most horrific sexualized violence in some of the most dangerous countries in the world, and campaigning for them to receive social recognition and compensation.”
For more on the Right Livelihood Award, please visit www.rightlivelihood.org
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 12 Oct 2008.
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