Kiwi peace activist Alyn Ware has picked up a much deserved gong for his work to rid the world of nuclear weapons. He is one of three people to receive the Right Livelihood Award established by Swedish-German philanthropist Jakob von Uexkull to recognize work he felt was ignored by the Nobel Prizes.

It is great to see Alyn getting the recognition. He is one of the world’s most accomplished and effective peace campaigners. And he does it all on the smell of an oily rag.

Alyn was active in the peace movement’s campaign in the early 1980s to turn NZ nuclear-free one suburb at a time.  He pioneered peace education in schools driving the length and breadth of the country in a van, and founded the Cool School peer mediation project.  For many years based in New York he was one of the most savvy and well connected NGO lobbyists at the UN. Along with other New Zealand peace campaigners he was a prime mover in the World Court Project which won a declaratory judgement from the International Court of Justice that nuclear weapons are illegal and that the nuclear weapons states have a legal obligation to disarm. In recent years Alyn has staffed the highly regarded international Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament network.  And he co-authored the model Nuclear Weapons Convention, a prototype global treaty that would ban nuclear weapons which is gathering support.

It is an extraordinary contribution.

And a nice irony given the Nobel committee cited President Obama’s efforts on nuclear disarmament as one of the reasons for giving him the Peace Prize last Friday.  Asked to compare the two awards, Ole von Uexkull, the Right Livelihood Foundation’s executive director and nephew of the prize founder, told AP Ware had actively campaigned against nuclear weapons for 25 years, while Obama had yet to translate words into action.

Von Uexkull said Ware was “one of the world’s most effective peace workers.” The jury recognised his “effective and creative advocacy over two decades to further peace education and to rid the world of nuclear weapons.” The award carries a 50,000 euro prize. Well deserved I’d say.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 14th, 2009 at 11:00 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.