Presentation of the Sjarov Prize

The Sjarov Prize for freedom of conscience is awarded every year the European Parliament. Created in 1988, rewards individuals or groups working to defend human rights and fundamental freedoms. The European Parliament delivers its Award for the defense of human rights (50 000) in the course of a formal sitting in Strasbourg around December 10. The date corresponds to the day of the signing, in 1948, of the Universal Declaration of human rights of the United Nations.

Who was Andrei Sakharov?

Russian physicist Andrei Sakharov (1921-1989) Dimitrivich is first and foremost the inventor of the hydrogen bomb. Worried about the consequences of their work for the future of humanity, his claim is aware of the danger of the nuclear arms race. Get a partial success through the signing of the treaty banning nuclear tests in 1963. Considered in the Soviet Union as a dissident of subversive ideas, create a Committee for the defense of human rights and the defense of victims policies in the 1970s. Their efforts were crowned with the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975.

2001 Sakharov Prize

-Nurit Peled-Elhanan (Israel 1949) is an activist pacifist and Israeli University Professor. For decades, politicians from around the world have tried to solve the tensions between Israelis and Palestinians. Two activists who received the prize in 2001 represent hope and efforts for the sake of reconciliation and of the end of the conflict between Palestine and Israel. The Israeli Nurit Peled-Elhanan lost her 13-year-old daughter in a suicide attack in Jerusalem. However, instead of losing hope, Nurit Peled-Elhanan opted find inner strength to work for dialogue between the two communities. -Izzat (al-) Ghazzawi (Deir al-Ghusun, April 1951 - Ramallah, 4 December 2003) was a writer and critical of literature Palestinian. The Palestinian Izzat Ghazzawi wrote novels about the suffering caused by the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. He also lost his son in the conflict and he has been imprisoned several times by the Israeli authorities for his political activities -Zacarias Kamwenho (Chimbundo, 5 September 1934) is a Emeritus Archbishop pacifist Angolan . The people who lived in Angola after its Declaration of independence in the 1970s could not even imagine that the civil war that erupted soon after lasted 26 years. The results were devastating: a third of the population was

displaced, many women were raped, and the innocence of youth was corrupted by the phenomenon of child soldiers. Several religious leaders and civil society groups attempted to find a peaceful solution. One of them was Archbishop Dom Zacarias Kamwenho, together with other activists participated in the peace negotiations that concluded with the cease-fire in 2002. The European Parliament awarded her courage in 2001.