Tutu awarded Unesco human rights prize
2012-12-11 07:18
Video
2012-10-05 09:40
Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu was awarded a one-off R8.52m ($1m) prize by the Mo Ibrahim foundation on Thursday. Watch Ibrahim explain why.WATCH
Paris - Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu was on Monday
awarded the Unesco/Bilbao human rights prize for "his exceptional
contribution to building a universal culture of human rights at the national,
regional and international levels".
The jury highlighted the role he played in building the new
non-racial South Africa and his contribution as head of the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission to national reconstruction which became a model for
other post-conflict societies, Unesco said in a statement.
Tutu's daughter was in the UN cultural organisation’s Paris
headquarters to receive the award on behalf of her father.
The biennial Unesco/Bilbao Prize was established in 2008
after an endowment from the city of Bilbao in Spain. It includes a $30 000
cheque, a diploma and a bronze trophy.
Tutu and two other Nobel Peace laureates last month wrote to
the Nobel foundation in protest at the decision to award the 2012 prize to the
European Union.
The "EU is clearly not 'the champion of peace' that
Alfred Nobel had in mind when he wrote his will," they said in an open
letter.
The letter was also signed by Northern Ireland's Mairead
Maguire, who won the prize in 1976, and Argentina's Adolfo Perez Esquivel in
1980.
- SAPA
