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Glamour's Women of the Year
Slain nun receives UN human rights award
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
As Sister Dorothy Stang was posthumously honored with the 2008 United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights Wednesday, admirers gathered at the Dayton International Peace Museum. The Dayton-born nun was killed while working to preserve the Amazon rainforest in 2005.
"They always say that a prophet is without honor in her hometown, so we wanted to make sure there was some event recognizing her in Dayton as she received this award," said Bill Meers, a volunteer with the peace museum which is currently host to an exhibit on Stang's life and work.
U.N. General Assembly President Miguel d'Escoto presented the award to David Stang, Dorothy's sister, representing the family. Benazir Bhutto, the slain prime minister of Pakistan, was the other posthumous winner. "She is in wonderful company," said Stang's sister, Barbara Richardson of Dayton. "She and Mrs. Bhutto are shaking up the heavens. I am just so proud of her and so happy she is staying in the public eye, because it's so bad in Brazil and people are suffering so much."
Alana Campion, a middle school teacher at Dayton's Mary Queen of Peace School, brought some of her older students to the peace museum for the event. "It's wonderful for them to have a local hero," she said.
"It was very nice and she deserved it," said eighth-grader Ebony Taylor. "She is the only person I know who recited three of the Beatitudes before she died. She is a good role model because she stood up for what she believed in."
Other winners this year include Louise Arbour, former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights; Ramsey Clark, former U.S. attorney general; Carolyn Gomes, co-founder of Jamaicans for Justice; Denis Mukwege, a Congolese doctor who treats female victims of sexual violence; and Human Rights Watch, an organization that has documented human rights abuses for 30 years.
The Human Rights Prize was first awarded in 1968 — with Eleanor Roosevelt as a posthumous recipient — and it is given out once every five years on the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
