Edward Snowden has been awarded the Right Livelihood Award. Together with the Guardian’s Alan Rusbridger he will receive the Honorary Award. As to its founder, German-Swedish philantropist Jakob von Uexkull,
“The Right Livelihood Award was established in 1980 to honour and support those ‘offering practical and exemplary answers to the most urgent challenges facing us today’. It has become widely known as the ‘Alternative Nobel Prize’ and there are now 153 Laureates from 64 countries.
Presented annually in Stockholm at a ceremony in the Swedish Parliament, the Right Livelihood Award is usually shared by four Recipients. The prize money for each Laureate is 500,000 SEK (2013) but not always all Laureates receive a cash award. Often an Honorary Award is given to a person or group whose work the Jury wishes to recognise but who is not primarily in need of monetary support. The prize money is for ongoing successful work, never for personal use.”
Snowden is also nominated for the Peace Nobel Prize which he certainly won’t receive next month. The Norwegian Committee in Oslo under its chairman, former Prime Minister Thorbjørn Jagland, has completely discredited itself when awarding U.S. American President Barack Obama in 2009 after he had given a couple of speeches in a number of locations. The choice of the European Union two years ago was widely criticized as well.
Snowden joins a group of illustrious laureates, for example Petra Kelly (1982), Robert Jungk (1986), Hans-Peter Dürr and Mordechai Vanunu (1987), who holds a honorary doctorate at my current university; and more recently Daniel Ellsberg (2006) and Amy Goodman (2008).
24 September 2014 @ 5:31 pm.
Last modified September 24, 2014.
