The Sophie Prize for 2006 has been awarded to the Argentinean lawyer and human rights activist Romina Picolotti. In 1999, Ms. Picolotti founded the Centre for Human Rights and Environment (CEDHA), the world’s first organisation solely dedicated to promoting and protecting human rights violated by environmental destruction. CEDHA’s work also monitors large international development infrastructure financing, to ensure that international financial institutions (IFIs) such as the World Bank are complying with their own environmental and social safeguards. <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
CEDHA is challenging a pulp factory project in Uruguay financed in part by the World Bank. Picolotti filed a complaint against the World Bank’s Compliance Advisory Ombudsman for failed policy compliance of the IFC-financed projects, and then took the case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the first time ever that a human rights tribunal is reviewing violations caused by a World Bank project, placing World Bank activity in a binding judicial forum.
CEDHA had also successfully employed the Aarhus Convention’s access to information provisions to obtain information from the Government of Finland on Finnvera, an independent limited company wholly owned by Finland, which is processing the grant of an export credit to the project.
This innovative approach to addressing the claim by many international organizations that they are immune from human rights obligations was cited by the Jury awarding this year’s Prize.
In a statement announcing the award, which includes 100,000 USD, the Sophie Foundation said, “This will make human rights a stronger instrument for building democracy and contribute to a more just distribution of the world’s resources.”
For background on the story, see the Clearinghouse News feature “Argentine-based NGO successfully employs Aarhus Convention Access to Information Rights” -
http://aarhusclearinghouse.unece.org/news.cfm?id=1000136
[Source: The Sophie Foundation - http://www.sophieprize.org/Prize_Winners/2006/index.html]
