Stockholm, Sept. 28, (dpa/GNA) – The Right Livelihood Awards, commonly known as the “Alternative Nobel Prizes,” have been awarded this year to the European aid organization SOS Méditerranée, a Ghanaian women’s rights activist, and environmentalists from Kenya and Cambodia.
The award has a broad remit, and has honoured champions of human rights, the environment and peace since 1980.
SOS Méditerranée is receiving the renowned prize “for its life-saving humanitarian search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean Sea,” the Right Livelihood Foundation announced in Stockholm on Thursday.
Also receiving an award this year are women’s rights activist Eunice Brookman-Amissah from Ghana, environmentalist Phyllis Omido from Kenya and the Cambodian environmental activist group Mother Nature Cambodia.
“With their concrete and courageous work, the laureates fight for people’s right to health, the right to safety, to a clean environment and to democracy. In doing so, they demonstrate to all of us what can and what indeed has to be done to build a world based on justice, peace and sustainability,” foundation director Ole von Uexküll said in Stockholm.
“The award will strengthen them and their important struggles and demonstrate to people around the world that everyone has the power to create change,” he said.
The fact that SOS Méditerranée is among those selected this time could give new impetus to the civilian sea
The organization was selected for its life-saving search and rescue missions on the Mediterranean, the deadliest migration route in the world, von Uexküll said.
He paid tribute to the group’s unwavering commitment, saying it not only saves lives, but is a constant reminder to the public as well as to European institutions and national governments of the humanitarian crisis in the Mediterranean.
SOS Méditerranée has rescued nearly 39,000 people in the Mediterranean since it was founded by German merchant marine captain Klaus Vogel and French activist Sophie Beau in 2015.
“What societies do we want to live in? I do not want to live in a society that lets people die at sea to make a political point,” the director of SOS Méditerranée Switzerland, Caroline Abu Sa’da, told dpa. Whether refugees or other kinds of migrants – no one should die, she added.
Sa’da called on governnments to help her group save lives.
Last year, the prize went to the Ukrainian Oleksandra Matviichuk and the Center for Civil Liberties (CCL) and several other groups.
The other recipients in 2022 were Somali human rights activists Fartuun Adan and Ilwad Elman, the Venezuelan collective Cecosesola and the Uganda-based Africa Institute for Energy Governance (Afiego).
The Right Livelihood Award is separate from the actual Nobel Prizes, which will be announced in Stockholm and Oslo from Monday.
In the past, Right Livelihood has been awarded to world-famous personalities such as US whistleblower Edward Snowden and Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg.
However, the Right Livelihood Foundation usually honours personalities and organizations that receive far less global attention.
GNA