ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE GIUSEPPE MOTTA MEDAL LAUREATES 2013

20 September 2013


ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE GIUSEPPE MOTTA MEDAL LAUREATES 2013

Geneva, Switzerland. On the 20th September we hosted our annual conference andawards ceremony, which took place at GIDD building. The conference featured talks from key European and American politicians, businessmen, famous human rights defenders and social activists.

Medal winners 2013:
• Support for peace and democracy - Aung San Suu Kyi
• Protection of human rights - Guillermo Fariñas
• Work to achieve sustainable development - Alessandro Carlucci
Our congratulations to all the winners!

“A reaction is needed when democracy and human rights are under threat, and this is what we do. But it is also necessary to encourage and place the spotlight on those who commit themselves to human rights, peace and sustainability and this is something we perhaps do a little less. This is what the Motta Medal does,” said Cesare Cavalcanti when he announced the Medal Laureates.

Since 2011, following the precedents with Liu Xiaobo (China, 2010) and Nasrin Sotoudeh (Iran, 2011) the Giuseppe Motta Medal is awarded in absentia in solidarity with the awardees who because of various reasons are unable to attend the Award ceremony.
Giuseppe Motta Medal with a prize diploma is getting sent to awardees by mail with the nominal parcel.

The Giuseppe Motta Medal is presented annually since 2004 by the Geneva Institute for Democracy and Development to the people from any country or region of the world for exceptional achievement in the promotion of peace and democracy, human rights and sustainable development. The prize commemorates Giuseppe Motta (1871-1940), a Swiss politician, fivefold President of the Swiss Confederation, President of the League of Nations Assembly and member of the Swiss Federal Council. Giuseppe Motta devoted his life to promoting democracy and respect for human rights, advocated the peaceful development of relations with all the countries of the League of Nations.

Criteria
Motta Medal Laureates are selected according to following criteria:
• A candidate should be active in the struggle for the ideals and principles underlying the Human Rights Charter.
• A candidate's struggle for human rights should represent a non-violent perspective.
• A candidate may be only a person, and three medals are presented annually.

Nominations
Three medals are awarded annually according to nominations:
• Support for peace and democracy
• Protection of human rights
• Work to achieve sustainable development

Selection of candidates
Nominations for the Motta Medal are received and evaluated by the Motta Medal Committee. Recipient(s) are selected by the Board of Directors.

About the 2013 Giuseppe Motta Medal Recipients
Aung San Suu Kyi
The Burmese politician Aung San Suu Kyi (1945) is the daughter of the legendary liberation movement leader Aung San. Following studies abroad, she returned home in 1988. From then on,she led the opposition to the military junta that had ruled Burma since 1962. She was one of the founders of the National League for Democracy (NLD), and was elected secretary general of the party. Inspired by Mahatma Gandhi, she opposed all use of violence and called on the military leaders to hand over power to a civilian government. The aim was to establish a democratic society in which the country's ethnic groups could cooperate in harmony.
In 1989, the government placed Suu Kyi under house arrest, and she spent 15 of the next 21 years in custody. In the election in 1990, the NLD won a clear victory, but the generals prevented the legislative assembly from convening. Instead they continued to arrest members of the opposition and refused to release Suu Kyi from house arrest. In 1991, her ongoing efforts won her the Nobel Prize for Peace, and she was finally released from house arrest in November 2010, becoming one of the world's most prominent political prisoners. On 1 April 2012, her party, the National League for Democracy, announced that she was elected to the Pyithu Hluttaw, the lower house of the Burmese parliament, representing the constituency of Kawhmu; her party also won 43 of the 45 vacant seats in the lower house.

Guillermo Fariñas
Guillermo Fariñas Hernández, ‘El Coco’ (1962) is a Cuban doctor of psychology, independent journalist and political dissident in Cuba. He has conducted 23 hunger strikes over the years to protest various elements of the Cuban regime. He has stated that he is ready to die in the struggle against censorship in Cuba.
Fariñas was born in Santa Clara. He won medals in 1981 while a Cuban soldier in Angola, when he fought under Colonel Antonio Enrique Luzon, and he was wounded in battle during the war. In 1982 Fariñas went to the U.S.S.R. to Tambov for military education. In 1993 he was elected in Cuba, as the General Secretary of Healthcare Union Workers. In 1995 he was sent to jail after blowing the whistle on corrupt activities of the hospital board director. In a 2007 interview with Harper's magazine Fariñas described State Security officers detaining him in Santa Clara, forcibly committing him to a psychiatric hospital ward overnight, and supervising his injection with unknown drugs.
Fariñas is one of several high-profile Cuban dissidents and former political prisoners who received rare permission this year to leave the island. In the USA, he is doing what he has done for years - denouncing the communist regime of Cuba's Castro brothers, and spreading the word about how opponents to the brothers are persecuted.

Alessandro Carlucci
Mr. Alessandro Giuseppe Carlucci was awarded for long-term management of the company, which has become a sustainability leader in South America and the second best company by this indicator in the world, in particular on the Global 100 List. Mr. Carlucci has taken great strides in ensuring that sustainability is a key component in all Natura’s decisions, and created a business model which combines economic growth with social and environmental needs. The Motta Medal Committee has also highly appreciated the materiality matrix of the Natura Management System which defined priority themes in the area of Natura’s sustainability.
Mr. Alessandro Giuseppe Carlucci has served as Chief Executive Officer and a Member of the Executive Board of Natura Cosmeticos SA since 2005. Prior to this, he had been Commercial Vice President and Member of the Executive Board of the Company since June 2002. He joined the Company in 1989, working in the Sales and Marketing area. In the 1990s, he worked in the Brazilian Sales Department and in the coordination of the International Operations of Argentina, Chile and Peru, at the regional headquarters in Buenos Aires, for three years. He also acts as Vice-President of the World Federation of Direct Selling Associations (WFDSA). He graduated from Fundacao Getulio Vargas (FGV) in Business Administration and from Kellogg School of Management where he attended Executive Programs.

The GIDD is an independent international institute dedicated to research into peace, democracy, human rights and socio-economic problems. Established in 2004 in Geneva, GIDD provides data, analysis and recommendations, based on open sources, to policymakers, researchers, media and the interested public.

gidd@gmx.ch

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This release was published on openPR.