2006 & 2007 awardees

Full profiles of Hind Kabawat, Azhar Hussain, Osnat Aram-Daphna and Najeeba Sirhan now available!  Profiles of Betty Bigombe and Ricardo Esquivia Ballestas coming soon.

Ricardo Esquivia Ballestas is a lay leader working within the Mennonite Church of Colombia and the Colombian Council of Evangelical Churches. Since 1998, he has represented all non-Catholic religious groups on the National Council of Peace, which advises the President of Colombia. He has participated in national and regional dialogues with both legal and illegal armed groups, including the National Armed Forces of Colombia and members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Mr. Esquivia is Co-founder and Director of the Commission for Restoration, Life and Peace of the Evangelical Council of Churches of Colombia (CEDECOL). He is also the Founder and former Director of both Justapaz, the Christian Center for Justice, Peace and Nonviolent Action of the Mennonite Church of Colombia, as well as Sembrandopaz, a peace and development initiative of Protestant churches on the North Coast of Colombia. In 2008, Mr. Esquivia’s lifelong work was honored with the Fellowship of Reconciliation’s International Pfeffer Peace Prize.

Reverend Benny Giay is an evangelical Protestant minister and advocate for justice, human rights and peace in West Papua, Indonesia.  In response to bitter divisions between ethnic Papuans and Indonesian migrants, as well as between the government and the inhabitants of West Papua, Rev. Giay and fellow activists created the Forum for Reconciliation of Irian Society (FORERI). Facing constant threats to his safety, Rev. Giay has opposed government policies of oppression and successfully mediated an agreement for the release of two Belgian hostages. His work has been instrumental in advocating the development of a “Zone of Peace” in West Papua – a vision yet to be realized.  Among his many activities, Rev. Giay moderates for the Papua Presidium Council, serves on the Board of the Institute for Human Rights Research and Advocacy (ELSHAM), and chairs the West Papuan Reconciliation Task Force.

Sakena Yacoobi a Muslim woman, founded the Afghan Institute of Learning (AIL) in 1995, the same year that the Taliban came to power. In the face of an oppressive regime, she started secret underground schools for women and girls. Believing that education must be used to reclaim Islam’s messages of peace and equality, Yacoobi teaches with, and through, the Koran. Under Yacoobi’s leadership, the AIL has grown to serve over 350,000 women and children each year in both rural and urban areas.  The AIL  now provides education programs, health care clinics, teacher-training programs, human rights seminars and vocational training, while simultaneously teaching Afghani women how to negotiate constructive relationships with men in a patriarchal society. All of her initiatives are based on peace education pedagogy. In recognition of her outstanding work, Yacoobi was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Humanitarian Service by Loma Linda University in 2008.

Abuna Elias Chacour is a Melkite Catholic priest who works for peace between Israelis and Palestinians in the Galilee. Despite resistance from the government, Father Chacour founded, and currently leads, the Mar Elias Educational Institutions, including the first Arab-Israeli Christian University in Israel. The elementary and secondary schools and university serve Christian, Muslim, Jewish and Druse students and their education ethos is manifest in daily interreligious dialogue. The first Arab to study Bible and Talmudic Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Father Chacour was named the 2001 Israeli Man of the Year and has been nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize. Father Chacour’s current work includes building schools, libraries, community centers and youth centers all over the Galilee. He has also published two new books: Hope Beyond Despair and Elias Chacour, Palestinian Arab, Christian Citizen of Israel.

Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, a South African of Zulu decent and a member of the Quaker Society of Friends, has long been influential in women’s rights, development and peace and security issues. A leader of the African National Congress (ANC) during the anti-apartheid struggle, she was arrested three times, at one point spending a year in solitary confinement. In 1999, Ms. Madlala-Routledge became the first black woman Deputy Minister of Defense. In this position, Ms. Madlala-Routledge advocated for a holistic approach to human security, resulting in the establishment of the African Peace and Security Council. Until August 2007, she served as Deputy Minister of Health, playing a leading role in fighting the HIV/AIDS epidemic of her country. She currently serves as the Deputy Speaker of Parliament in South Africa and recently led an Inter-Parliamentary Union delegation to the United Nations for UN reform.

The Reverend William Lowrey is an American affiliated with the Presbyterian Church and the New Sudan Council of Churches. For over a decade, during the country’s civil war, he worked at the local level in South Sudan to reconcile opposing tribes. He developed the People-to-People Peace Process among the Nuer and Dinka peoples, which successfully drew upon shared indigenous and religious peacemaking methods and rituals. Rev. Lowrey’s work culminated in the signing of the Loki Accord, in which tribal leaders committed to a peace process and, ultimately, to ending the Dinka-Nuer conflict. Since 2000, he has served as Director of Peacebuilding and Reconciliation for World Vision International. Rev. Lowrey is also the leader of an effort to define, form, facilitate and coach technical Communities of Practice for all of World Vision’s technical sectors and themes.

José "Chencho" Alas , a Catholic activist and native of El Salvador, is the President and Executive Director of the Foundation for Sustainability and Peacemaking in Mesoamerica. Today, he works to build a network of peacemakers in Mesoamerica, but he was first known for his leadership in organizing peasants in his own country. Mr. Alas empowered his fellow Salvadorans to act - even in the face of mortal threats posed by the military, the government and right-wing death squads - leading to the establishment of a "Zone of Peace" in the southern region of the country. More than once, he survived violent attempts to silence his message, and was forced to live in exile from El Salvador for fifteen years. Today, Mr. Alas trains peacemakers, helping them to draw connections between their religious beliefs and global peace by facilitating workshops on gender relations, human rights, conflict transformation and the earth and ecology.

Imam Muhammad Ashafa and Pastor James Wuye from Nigeria are co-founders of the Muslim-Christian Dialogue Forum and the Interfaith Mediation Center. Imam Ashafa is an Islamic preacher and Pastor James is affiliated with the Evangelical Christian Church. Both committed acts of violence as leaders in religious, sectarian militant youth movements before realizing that their religions called them to work for peace. Founded in 1995, their organization addresses the causes and effects of religious violence, including outreach to exclusionist youth, in order to promote peace and reconciliation within Nigeria and other parts of West Africa. Together, they were part of the successful mediation of the ethnic-religious conflict in Zagon-Kataf, Nigeria. In addition, they travel around the world to promote their film, The Imam & The Pastor, which has been recently translated into Arabic. Imam Ashafa and Pastor James are public speakers and trainers in high demand, and they are reaching mass audiences with their message of the importance of interreligious peace-building.

Rabbi Menachem Froman is a Jewish Orthodox rabbi and resident of the Tekoa settlement in the West Bank.  A founder of the Gush Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful) settler movement, Rabbi Froman works tirelessly to initiate meetings and communication between Jewish settlers and Palestinian residents in the West Bank and Gaza. Rabbi Froman has reached out to such unlikely partners as Hamas leaders, and he developed a friendship with former Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, who eventually dubbed Rabbi Froman the “Wise One.” In February 2008, Rabbi Froman worked with a Palestinian journalist to draft a comprehensive truce agreement for Israel and Hamas. His recent letter to President Obama's policy advisors was co-signed by Gershon Baskin and Hanna Siniora, executive officers of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research & Information (IPCRI), one of the most established nongovernmental peace institutes in Israel/Palestine. Rabbi Froman has called for the world to declare Jerusalem an ex-territorial, shared "City of God."

Father Sava Janjic, of the Serbian Orthodox Church is the Archdeacon of the Decani Monastery in Kosovo. His work has included the promotion of inter-faith and inter-ethnic dialogues in the region. He risked his life many times in order to save the lives of Albanians and Serbs during the war in Kosovo and provided them with medicine and food. Father Janjic was also the lone voice combating the one-sided portrayal of the conflict in the international media, by providing reliable on-the-ground perspectives via the internet. His creative technological response to this misinformation earned him the nickname “the cyber monk.” After the war, Father Janjic served as spokesman of the Serbian National Council of Kosovo and Metohia and was a member of the Interim Administrative Council of Kosovo. Today, he continues to pursue peace through humanitarian work near the Decani Monastery.

Alimamy Koroma is General Secretary of the Council of Churches of Sierra Leone.  In 1997, Mr. Koroma founded the Inter-Religious Council of Sierra Leone. This organization of trusted religious leaders successfully facilitated talks between government officials and rebel groups to bring about the Lomé Peace Accords of 1999. Mr. Koroma also personally negotiated with rebel leaders for the release of 50 children who were abducted to be child soldiers. Today, Koroma and the Inter-Religious Council continue their efforts to sustain a lasting peace by sensitizing the civilian population and youth organizations to the real consequences of war on people’s lives. Through a series of programs addressing child warfare, sexual abuse and HIV/AIDS, Mr. Koroma promotes the importance of grassroots education in building collaboration between Christian and Muslim communities in Sierra Leone.  

Yehezkel Landau, an American-Israeli Jew, facilitates communication and understanding both among Jews and between Jews and Arabs. Through his past work as Program Coordinator for the Israel Interfaith Association and Executive Director of the Ozve Shalom-Netivot Shalom religious peace movement, and as Co-founder of the Open House Center for Jewish-Arab Coexistence, Landau has positively touched the lives of thousands. In these positions, Landau has sought practical ways to apply his religious convictions by drawing on Jewish teachings about justice and compassion in order to address discrimination against Arabs and to foster relationships of equality and solidarity between Israeli Arabs and Jews. Today, Landau is a Faculty Associate in Interfaith Relations at Hartford Seminary and Director of an interfaith training program called “Building Abrahamic Partnerships.” Mr. Landau is also a lobbyist in Washington, D.C., pushing policymakers to consider the religious dimension of conflict and its resolution in U.S. foreign policy.

Reverend Roy Magee was a Presbyterian minister based in east Belfast, a center point of the conflict between Northern Irish paramilitary groups. In the face of rising sectarian conflict in the 1960s, Rev. Magee responded to a calling to diffuse the conflict by engaging paramilitary troops. He believed this - rather than alienating, coercive tactics – was the only way to peace. From his position as a respected member of the clergy, and by utilizing his contacts with some of the most important paramilitary figures, Rev. Magee played a major role in bringing about the 1994 loyalist cease-fire. His peacemaking efforts were instrumental in enabling the 1993 Downing Street Declaration and the historic 1998 Good Friday Agreement. Rev. Magee died on January 31, 2009 at the age of 79 (please visit Rev. Magee's memorial page).

Friar Ivo Markovic is a Franciscan priest who risked his life facilitating interfaith work and coordinating international relief efforts in the Balkans. During the war in Bosnia, he successfully negotiated ceasefires between local ethnic groups and tirelessly wrote and spoke out against the misuse of religion to promote violence. He organized the first interfaith choir in Bosnia, the award-winning Pontanima Choir and Chamber Orchestra, which has toured the world with performances that combine Western Christian, Orthodox Christian, Muslim, Jewish and Far Eastern religious music. Today, Friar Markovic works to sustain a pluralistic Bosnia as head of Face to Face Interreligious Service, the interfaith organization he co-founded. Together with Pontanima Choir members, Friar Markovic also organizes seminars, lectures and projects that promote the power of music as a tool for spiritual healing and reconciliation.