Anne Klein Women’s Award 2018 to Jineth Bedoya Lima and Mayerlis Angarita Robles

Mayerlis Angarita and Jineth Bedoya are the recipients of the Anne Klein Women’s Award 2018 for the many years that they have dedicated to women’s rights and peaceful conflict resolution in Colombia. In doing so, the Jury is recognizing in Jineth Bedoya Lima and Mayerlis Angarita Robles two women who have campaigned independently from each other for the rights of women and girls in armed conflicts, against the use of structural sexual violence against women, and for peace in Colombia and the nation coming to terms with its past. They are actively engaged at the national, regional and international levels for the rights and participation of women from their native country and thus vicariously for all women across the globe.

Says Barbara Unmüßig, Jury Chair and President of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung: “A year after the peace accord came into effect between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC, its implementation and also reconciliation still has a long way to go. Mayerlis Angarita and Jineth Bedoya have long since been committed to supporting women’s rights and have risked their lives in the process. I salute their courage, their staying power and their commitment to fostering the peace process in Colombia, which urgently needs a gender perspective.”

The Anne Klein Women’s Award is being bestowed for the seventh time and is endowed with €10,000. The Jury’s statements as well as portraits and photos of the award winners are available here.

The Award ceremony will take place on 2 March 2018, 7 p.m.

Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, Schumannstr. 8, 10117 Berlin (Germany)

The event will be broadcast on livestream

The Laudatory speech will be held by Tom Koenigs, Special Envoy of the Federal Foreign Office for the Colombian Peace Process

Admission is free. We ask all those interested in attending to register by 26 February.