Barbados Prime Minister, Mia Mottley is among three people named on Friday as an honoree in this year’s international Zayed Award for Human Fraternity.
Mottley was recognized for her work as a climate change champion and named alongside the humanitarian organization, World Central Kitchen, founded by Chef José Andrés; and 15-year-old health innovator Heman Bekele, the award’s first youth honoree, who developed a cost-effective soap to prevent and treat early-stage skin cancer when he was 14.
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The annual independent international award recognizes “people and entities of all backgrounds, anywhere in the world, who are working selflessly and tirelessly across divides to advance the timeless values of solidarity, integrity, fairness, and optimism and create breakthroughs towards peaceful coexistence”.
The awardees were announced at a news conference here and Mottley, speaking via video, said that she was honored but did not expect to receive it.
“We do things every day to make lives easier and to make them sleep easy at night. I, therefore, never expected this kind of award,” said Mottley, an attorney, who is into her second term as prime minister.
“I think it’s a validation that we are doing the right thing for the right reasons. This is the only planet we have that can sustain life”.
She said that she repeatedly says, “We have to see people, hear people, and feel people.
“If we do that, we then begin to understand how they become victims, not just to the climate crisis, but continue to be victims to a very unfair and unjust world that has not created a level playing field sufficiently, either for the 193 countries that we have globally, or for the occupants of those countries.”
Mottley said there is still very much “a sense of first-class and second-class citizens.
“And you know that that is unacceptable. It is our common humanity that binds us together. And I hope that we never ever forget that we continue to have vulnerabilities to climate and biodiversity loss.
“We continue to have vulnerabilities to war and conflict and crime. We continue to have problems with the future and integrity of our soils, which is what, for the most part, provides food for the majority of the human population.”
The Zayed Award for Human Fraternity was launched in 2019 following the historic meeting here between Pope Francis and the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Ahmed Al-Tayeb, during which they co-signed the Document on Human Fraternity.
It is named in honor of the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, founder of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), renowned for his humanitarianism and dedication to helping people no matter their background or place in the world.
Mottley paid tribute to Zayed’s vision, saying, he “literally took a country that was fighting to be able to bring development to its people and did not rely on what the prosperity of oil alone brought to him, but made a determination that development must come outside of the bounty given to them through oil”.
The award is adjudicated by its independent jury for their notable contributions to pressing societal issues and nurturing peace and solidarity across diverse communities — both globally and at the grassroots level. (CMC)
