NEW YORK, June 23, 2010 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation today announced that it will award the 2010 Women's Rights Prize to two organizations that have contributed significantly to advancing women's reproductive health and rights in many countries.
Center for Reproductive Rights – an organization, headquartered in New York City, dedicated to winning for all women the right to decide whether and when to have children, the freedom to exercise that right, and access to the best reproductive healthcare available. Since 1992, the Center has used both US constitutional law and international human rights law to bring important cases before the courts, UN committees and regional human rights bodies. As a result of these efforts, women in more than 50 countries have expanded access to birth control, safe abortion, prenatal and obstetric care and reliable information about reproductive health and human rights.
CLADEM (Comite de America Latina y El Caribe para la Defensa de los Derechos de la Mujer) – a regional organization in Latin America and the Caribbean that promotes, monitors and defends women's rights as human rights and contributes to the construction of real democracies in which women can fully exercise their human rights and participate at all levels of society with freedom from violence. CLADEM was founded in Costa Rica in 1987, two years after the United Nations Third World Conference on Women in Nairobi, Kenya, at which female lawyers gathered to discuss the need for judicial and political reform to defend women's rights. Currently, about 200 individual and organizational associates in 14 countries are affiliated with CLADEM.
The Women's Rights Prize will be awarded in a ceremony this fall celebrating the achievements of the recipients, which will share the $500,000 prize.
"Given the decision-making power and influence historically exercised by men both in the family and within political and judicial institutions, successfully effecting any change on behalf of women's rights presents an enormous challenge," said Pinar Ilkkaracan, founding president of Turkey's Women for Women's Human Rights – New Ways and a Gruber laureate and advisor. "To stand up for the freedom of women to control their sexual and reproductive lives in the face of longstanding political, judicial, cultural and religious gender inequality and bias, requires extraordinary courage and commitment. The Center for Reproductive Rights and CLADEM have demonstrated exactly that level of courage and commitment in promoting and defending women's sexual and reproductive freedom and in achieving dramatic changes that have significantly advanced the cause of women's human rights."
The official citation reads:
The Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation proudly presents the 2010 Women's Rights Prize to:
The Center for Reproductive Rights, a U.S.-based organization that uses the law to protect women's reproductive freedom, and The Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defense of Women's Rights (CLADEM), a network of activists and organizations from countries in the region committed to the defense of women's rights as human rights, for their historic collaboration in advancing women's sexual and reproductive rights and successfully holding governments accountable for complying with international treaties and standards on women's rights.
The Gruber International Prize Program honors contemporary individuals in the fields of Cosmology, Genetics, Neuroscience, Justice and Women's Rights, whose groundbreaking work provides new models that inspire and enable fundamental shifts in knowledge and culture. The Selection Advisory Boards choose individuals whose contributions in their respective fields advance our knowledge, potentially have a profound impact on our lives, and, in the case of the Justice and Women's Rights Prizes, demonstrate courage and commitment in the face of significant obstacles.
The Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation honors and encourages educational excellence, social justice and scientific achievements that better the human condition. For more information about Foundation guidelines and priorities, include full recipient bios, please visit www.gruberprizes.org or www.facebook.com/gruberprizes.
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