Women fight for rights in the Americas

Embargo/presentation 16.00EST, 2 November 2006, Jerome Greene Hall, Columbia University Law School, New York

The winners of the 2006 Gruber Prize for Women’s Rights are:

• Luz Méndez for the Unión Nacional de Mujeres Guatemaltecas (UNAMG), a Guatemalan women’s rights organization;
• Julie Su for Sweatshop Watch, a California-based coalition fighting against exploitation of migrants in sweat shops;
• Chilean jurist Cecilia Medina Quiroga, the only woman judge on the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

The two organizations and Judge Medina each receive a gold medal and a third of the $300,000 unrestricted cash award.

“In the United States it’s easy to think that the fight for women’s rights is won,” says Peter Gruber, Chairman of the Peter Gruber Foundation. “In fact, in the US and across the Americas, the fight is far from over. This year we recognize women and organizations who are working at the front line – sometimes at great personal risk – to sustain and build women’s rights in the Americas.”

Founded in 1980, UNAMG is one of the oldest women’s rights organizations in Guatemala and was forced to operate in exile overseas for many years due to political repression. It resumed working in Guatemala in 1996 under the guidance of Luz Méndez, but Amnesty International recently warned that it “fears for the safety” of individuals involved in women’s rights organizations in Guatemala.

Sweatshop Watch is a California-based organization committed to eliminating exploitation of sweatshop workers. Julie Su, a co-founder of Sweatshop Watch, successfully defended 72 Thai garment workers who were discovered working behind barbed wire and under armed guard in 1995 following a raid on a California sweatshop. Since then, Sweatshop Watch, in collaboration with the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, has brought cases on behalf of hundreds of workers against major corporations who use sweatshops to manufacture the garments they sell.

Chilean jurist Cecilia Medina Quiroga, the only woman judge on the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, is one of the most prominent human rights jurists in Latin America. She was author of the groundbreaking Comment 28 of the Human Rights Committee of the UN. The comment calls for nations to “not only adopt measures of protection for women’s rights, but also to take positive measures so as to achieve the effective and equal empowerment of women.” Quiroga is now working to integrate these principles in mainstream international law.

“The prize honors those who have made significant contributions, often at great risk, to furthering the rights of women and girls and advancing public awareness of the necessity of these rights in achieving a just world,” says Peter Gruber.

The Peter Gruber Foundation was founded in 1993 and established the first of its international prizes in 2000. The Foundation now supports five international awards: Cosmology, Genetics, Neuroscience, Justice and Women’s Rights.

The 2006 Cosmology Prize was presented in August to NASA’s John Mather and the COBE team. The Justice Prize was awarded in September to Aharon Barak, recently retired President of the Supreme Court of Israel. The Genetics and Neuroscience Prizes were awarded in October: Genetics to Elizabeth Blackburn for her work on cell aging and telomeres, and her science advocacy; and Neuroscience to Masao Ito and Roger Nicoll for their contributions to revealing the biological bases of learning and memory.

Contact Niall Byrne: niall@scienceinpublic.com, +1 314 448 9909 (US cell till 11 November), +61 417 131 977 (Australian cell) or Sarah Hrehra, +1 340 775 8039.

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