The human rights movement Black Lives Matter has won this year’s Sydney peace prize.
In a groundbreaking departure from tradition, the prestigious international award that recognizes peacemakers around the world for promoting human rights, nonviolence and “peace with justice” will not be awarded to an individual. Instead, The Guardian reports that the 2017 Sydney Peace Prize will go to the Black Lives Matter movement.
The movement – which will be honored in Sydney in November – was founded by Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi after the 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman, who had been accused of murdering black teenager Trayvon Martin.
Western Australian Labor senator Pat Dodson, who was awarded the Sydney peace prize in 2008 for his advocacy for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, applauded the selection of Black Lives Matter as a movement that stood against “ignorance, hostility, discrimination, or racism”.
“This movement resonates around the globe and here in Australia, where we have become inured to the high incarceration rates and deaths in custody of our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples,” Dodson told The Guardian. “It’s as if their lives do not matter.
“For our communities, the storyline is all too familiar: the minor offence; the innocuous behaviour; the unnecessary detention; the failure to uphold the duty of care; the lack of respect for human dignity; the lonely death; the grief, loss and pain of the family – the coronial report where no one is held responsible for a death in custody.”
Since 1998, Australia’s Sydney University has honored an individual who embodied the spirit of fighting injustice with peace. This year marks the first time the Sydney Foundation has chosen a movement instead of a single person as a recipient of the prize.
Global peacemakers and past award recipients applauded the Sydney Foundation’s choice as “bold” and “inspired.” The prize will be awarded to the co-founders at a Sydney Peace Foundation dinner in November. They will also deliver the City of Sydney peace lecture at a public ceremony.
