Natasa Kandic, founder and Executive Director of the Humanitarian Law Center, and Viosa Dobruna, founder of the Center for Protection of Women and Children in Kosovo and Co-Minister for Democratization with the United Nations Mission in Kosovo, are recipients of this year’s human rights award of the Italian Alexander Langer Stiftung-Onlus Foundation. The award will be presented to them on 2 July at a ceremony during the Euro-Mediterranean Festival in Bolzano, Italy. The award was established in 1997 in memory of Alexander Langer, a member of the European Parliament who died in 1995. In his election campaigns, Langer always devoted special attention to the citizens of Bolzano, a small city poplated by members of different ethnic communities.
The previous recipients of the Alexander Langer Award are Khalida Messacudi, member of the Algerian Parliament and a prominent champion of women’s civil rights (1997); Jolande Mukagasana of the Tutsi people whose entire family was massacred and whose book is a moving testimony about the Rwanda genocide in which 800,000 lost their lives, and Jacqueline Mukansoneri, a Hutu, who saved the life of Yolande at the risk of her own (1998); and last year the Chinese dissident couple, Ding Ziling and Jiang Peikun, both former philosophy professors at Beijing University, who have dedicated their lives to collecting documentation on all students killed by Chinese troops during the massive anti-government demonstrations in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989 and publicizing their names. The couple’s 17-year-old son, Jiang Jelian, was among those killed during the demonstrations.
The Foundation gives the award to people who are committed to the defense of universal human rights, establishment of civil society, good relations among nations and environment protection. The award carries a prize of 2,000 German marks. Natasa Kandic will donate her share of the prize to the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in the Sandzak.
