Canadian wins Swedish prize for fight for Inuit rights

Yahoo – AFP, 1 October 2015

The Inuit culture in the Arctic is acutely threatened by climate change," according

to the Right Livelihood jury (AFP Photo)

Stockholm (AFP) - Inuit and Arctic activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier of Canada on Thursday won the 2015 Right Livelihood Award, the jury for the Swedish human rights prize announced.

Watt-Cloutier was honoured for her "lifelong work to protect the Inuit of the Arctic and defend their right to maintain their livelihoods and culture, which are acutely threatened by climate change," the jury said in a statement.

Sheila Watt-Cloutier addresses the 

2007 Women Leaders Global
Security meeting in New York 
(AFP Photo/Don Emmert)

She shared the prize with two other laureates: Ugandan activist Kasha Jacqueline Nabageserales, who fights for the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and intersexual (LGBTI) communities, and Italian doctor Gino Strada who founded the medical charity Emergency that helps rehabilitate war victims.

The three laureates will share the 3.0-million-kronor (320,00-euro, $358,000) prize sum.

The foreign minister of the Marshall Islands, Tony de Brum, and the islands' entire population meanwhile won the Right Livelihood Honorary Award for their "their vision and courage to take legal action against the nuclear powers for failing to honour their disarmament obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty."

Swedish-German philatelist Jakob von Uexkull founded the donor-funded prize in 1980 after the Nobel Foundation behind the Nobel Prizes refused to create awards honouring efforts in the fields of the environment and international development.

They were introduced "to honour and support those offering practical and exemplary answers to the most urgent challenges facing us today," according to the Right Livelihood Award Foundation, which oftens calls its distinction the "alternative Nobel prize."

Related Article:

Marshall Islands sues nine nuclear powers over failure to disarm