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I think with this meeting I'm becoming a part of a family that will help my work.

Rev. Dr. Benny Giay,
2003 Awardee
 

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The reality is that religion has power. And that power can either be used creatively or destructively.
Canon White
Under the Taliban, I knew I could be trapped, kidnapped, and killed. But I counted it a privilege to help my people forge a new Afghanistan.
Sakena Yacoobi
This land, this Palestine, this Israel, does not belong to either Jews or Palestinians. Rather, we are compatriots who belong to the land and to each other. If we cannot live together, surely we will be buried here together. We must choose life.
Abuna Chacour
Because of [my] ministry, I was kidnapped..., tortured, and beaten almost to death.
"Chenco" Alas
The Church teaches us that the greatest patriot is the one who can show human love not only towards his neighbor but also towards his enemy, especially when he is disabled and unarmed.
Father Janjic
Usually, the elders make the war, the youth fight it. By reaching the youth, we make sure that there is nobody to go and fight.
Reverend Wuye
You can unite people by showing your interest in them, by caring for them, by loving them. But you can't unite them by using violence on them. Instead of bringing people together, violence is widening the gap between them.
Father Reid
 2007  2005  2003 2001

  1999

 2006  2004  2002 2000   1998

just announced: 2006 & 2007 awardees

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

Peacemaker Azhar Hussain
Azhar Hussain, 2006 Peacemaker in Action
A Muslim Pakistani-American, Azhar Hussain is a leader in engaging the teachers and administrators of Pakistan's madrasas. He serves as the Vice President for Preventative Diplomacy at the International Center for Religion & Diplomacy (ICRD).  He has collaborated with the United States Institute of Peace to initiate, develop, and deliver a peace education training program for Pakistani religious leaders. Currently, he leads the Pakistan Madrasa Project at ICRD, which encourages critical thinking and conflict resolution skills in madrasa education, with a special emphasis on religious tolerance and human rights within the madrasa structure.
  
 2007 Peacemaker Betty Oyella BigombeBetty Oyella-Bigombe, 2007 Peacemaker in Action
Betty Oyella Bigombe, a Christian and former member of parliament in Uganda, was responsible for bringing representatives from the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army and Ugandan government ministers face-to-face for the first time. During these negotiations, known as the “Bigombe talks”, she served as chief mediator. This work earned her the title of Uganda’s Woman of the Year in 1993. Bigombe’s early mediation laid the foundation for the current negotiations taking place in northern Uganda and Southern Sudan. She is currently a senior fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace.
  
Osnat Aram-Daphna and Najeeba Sirhan

Osnat Aram-Daphna and Najeeba Sirhan, 2006 Women's Peace Initiative awardees
Ms. Aram-Daphna, a Jew, and Ms. Sirhan, a Muslim, have successfully brought together the educators of their respective Jewish and Muslim schools in the Galilee to work toward reconciliation and coexistence. Both women serve as principals of schools in the neighboring Karmiel and Majd el-Krum, and their partnership focuses on educating youth about their respective communities through activities and the joint celebration of Jewish and Muslim holidays. The two schools have supported each other in times of joy and strife, sharing the burden when both Karmiel and Majd el-Krum were victimized by missile attacks during the war in 2006.

  
 2007 WPI Awardee Hind Kabawat Hind Kabawat, 2007 Women's Peace Initiative awardee
Ms. Kabawat, a Christian from Syria, works behind the scenes to bring together key members of the country's diplomatic and religious circles. She has led a variety of public diplomacy efforts in Syria to promote interfaith tolerance and cooperation, modernization and reform, and educational innovation in conflict resolution and diplomacy education. Ms. Kabawat is a practicing attorney who serves as an adviser to many national and international firms and NGOs. She is a senior research associate in Public Diplomacy at the Center for World Religions, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University. 
  
   
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       2005 
 Ricardo Esquivia Ballestas is a visionary lay leader working within the Mennonite Church of Colombia and the Colombian Council of Evangelical Churches, in the noble cause of peace. Since 1998, he has represented all non-Catholic religious groups on the National Council of Peace, which advises the President of Colombia. Fearless, he has participated in national and regional dialogues with legal and illegal armed groups, including the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), National Liberation Army (ELN), United Self-Defenses of Colombia (AUC), and members of the National Armed Forces of Colombia. Mr. Ballestas is Co-founder and Director of the Commission for Restoration, Life and Peace of the Evangelical Council of Churches of Colombia (CEDECOL) and Founder and former Director of Justapaz, the Christian Center for Justice, Peace and Nonviolent Action of the Mennonite Church of Colombia.
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    2004 
The Reverend Canon Andrew P.B. White is an Anglican peace activist and scholar who works tirelessly to stem and alleviate suffering in the Middle East and Africa. Canon White has helped to negotiate and draft peace agreements and has played a key role in peace negotiations, most notably during the siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem (2002) and during riots between Muslims and Christians in Northern Nigeria (2000). While negotiating, he works to ensure that humanitarian needs are met during times of crisis. he is currently working with Iraqi political and religious leaders to establish the Iraqi Institute of Religious Tolerance. Canon White is CEO and President of the Foundation for Reconciliation in the Middle East and an Eric Lane Fellow at Clare College Cambridge.
   
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    2003 

Reverend Benny Giay, an evangelical Protestant minister, advocates for justice, human rights, and peace in Papua, Indonesia. He was a founding member of the Irian Jaya Forum for Reconciliation (FORERI); 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. Among his accomplishments, he mediated for the release of hostages and helped establish a "Zone of Peace" in Papua.

   
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    2002 
Dr. Ephraim Issac has taught at Harvard and Princeton and
is fluent in some seventeen languages. He is affiliated with the Yemenite Jewish Federation of America, the Peace and Development Committee for Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa. Ephraim also founded the Ad Hoc Peace Committee to promote peace in Ethiopia and helped to negotiate peace among conflicting Ethiopian and Eritrean political parties who were involved with a civil war for thirty years. His many honors
most include recently being awarded Litt. D. (honorary Doctor of Letters) by Addis Ababa University in his native Ethiopia.
Sakena Yacoobi of the Afghan Institute of Learning (AIL) is a Muslim woman working to educate women and produce better Afghani citizens. AIL sponsors classes in one regular school and 74 home schools, which serve more than 2800 girls. AIL has established a health education program and several healthcare clinics. They also fund a teacher-training program and 21 preschools; conduct human rights seminars; and teach sewing and embroidery so women can support themselves.
  Abuna Elias Chacour is a Melkite Catholic who works for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. His work includes building school, libraries, community centers, and youth
centers all over the Galilee. He co-founded and heads Mar
Elias Educational Institutions. The school began with 80 stu- dents and grew into the Mar Elias Educational Institutions (MEEI), which now boasts more than 4,000 students from kindergarten through the university level. It is a place where Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and Druze students live together
and learn how to invest in a shared future.
  Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, a South African of Zulu descent and a member of the Quaker Society of Friends, has long been a leader on women's issues, development, and peace and security issues. She was active in the leadership of the African National Congress (ANC) during the anti-apartheid struggle, she was arrested three times, at one point spending one year in solitary confinement. In 1999, Ms. Madlala-Routledge became the first black woman Deputy Minister of Defense, through which she adopted a holistic approach to human security and established the African Peace and Security Council. Until August 2007, she served as Deputy Minister of Health, leading an effort to ensure that AIDS patients receive the best possible treatment.

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    2001 
 The Reverend William Lowrey is an American affiliated with the Presbyterian Church and the New Sudan Council of Churches.  For over a decade, he worked at the local level in South Sudan during the country's civil war to reconcile opposing tribes.  He developed a People-to-People Peace Process among the Nuer and Dinka peoples, which successfully drew upon shared indigenous and religious peacemaking methods and rituals that brought them together in agreement.  During a peace conference attended by the various tribes, the Rev. Lowery's work culminated in the signing of the Loki Accord, in which tribal leaders committed themselves 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.
  
     2000 
  José "Chencho" Alas , a Catholic activist, is the Executive Director of the Foundation for Self-Sufficiency. A native of El Salvador, he holds dual citizenship in El Salvador and the United States. His work includes the organization of oppressed peasants and workers in El Salvador, along with establishing a "Zone of Peace" in the southern region of the country. Among other things, he organized a demonstration to free teachers who were illegally imprisoned.
 

Imam Muhammad Ashafa and Pastor James Wuye come from Nigeria and are co-founders of the Muslim-Christian Dialogue Forum and Inter Faith Mediation Center.  Imam Ashafa is an Islamic Preacher with an active congregation in Nigeria.  Pastor James is affiliated with the Evangelical Christian Church.  Their work involves outreach to exclusionist youth in order to promote peace and reconciliation among the religious groups within Nigeria and other parts of West Africa. They mediated ethnic-religious conflicts in the Zangon Kafaf region of Nigeria.

  Rabbi Menachem Froman, a Jewish Orthodox rabbi, is a founder of the Gush Emunim settler movement and a resident of the Tekoa settlement in the West Bank. Committed to Jewish-Muslim reconciliation, he has reached out to Hamas leaders and met with Yasir Arafat to discuss religious peace- building. He also initiates meetings and communication between Jewish settlers and Palestinian residents in the West Bank.
  Father Sava Janjic, of the Serbian Orthodox Church, is the Assistant Abbot of 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 (regardless of ethnicity or religion) during the war in Kosovo and provided them with medicine and food.
  Alimamy Koroma is General Secretary of Council of Churches of Sierra Leone. The work that he has done includes promoting inter-religious dialogues and actions for peace, along with brokering negotiations between the government and rebel groups. He personally negotiated with rebel leaders for the release of 50 children held hostage. Today, Koroma and the Inter-Religious Council continues their efforts to sustain a lasting peace through a series of programs addressing child warfare, sexual abuse, and AIDS.
  Yehezkel Landau, an American-Israeli Jew, facilitates communication and understanding both among Jews and between Jews and Arabs. He served as program coordinator
for the Israel Interfaith Association; executive director of the Oz veShalom-Netivot Shalom religious peace movement; and co-founder and co-director of the Open House Center for Jewish-Arab Coexistence in Ramle, Israel. He continues his interfaith work as a faculty associate in Interfaith Relations
at Hartford Seminary.  
 Bishop Basilio do Nascimento is Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Baucau in East Timor. His work involves the promotion of reconciliation among Christians, Muslims, and Hindus of different political persuasions. He negotiated the peaceful evacuation of Baucau by Indonesian troops and
hostile militias.

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     1999 
  Reverend Roy McGee is a Presbyterian minister based in
east Belfast, where both the UDA and UVF loyalist paramilitary groups had many members. Through his contacts with some
of the most important paramilitary figures, he has come to be credited with a major role in bringing about the 1994 loyalist cease-fire. His ideas were incorporated in the 1993 Downing Street Declaration and enabled the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that helped to resolve the conflict in Northern Ireland.
 
Father Alex Reid instigated the initial meetings between Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein president, and John Hume, leader of the nationalist party SDLP. He has authored several position papers that were incorporated into the Downing Street Declaration of 1993 and conducted mediation efforts that led to the 1994 cease-fire and eventually to the Good Friday Agreement.
    
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     1998 
  Friar Ivo Markovic is a Franciscan priest who risked his
own life in 1993 to mediate a negotiation between two Croat and Bosniak commanders. He and other Franciscans were challenged by troops on both sides as they walked unarmed onto the field that separated the two armies. They were threatened by death by Bosniak troops at which point he shouted back, "You know I am a Franciscan and I am un- armed. We are coming to talk to you. You are going to kill me to stop me."
    
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