2001 Voices of Courage Awards

Irakli Sabekia's Speech

Mr. Richard, the director of our project, says if you want to light 1,000 candles you have to light the first one. This is what our program is doing.
It is lighting candles in us. We carry this light inside us and we are now all over the country. We are sharing our knowledge and experience with other children.

We are a group of young people who are 16, 17 and 18 years old. We have started a dialogue group where teenagers from opposite sides of the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict come together to speak to each other about our problems. Not with crying and quarreling, but with respect and understanding.

After the dialogue group, the Georgian side meets in a debate club where we come together and discuss our meeting with the Abkhazian side. We debate what was good, what was bad and ask ourselves whether there was progress. We invite historians and military people to share their experiences and we use this information to help us in our next meeting. But not to prove we are right and they are wrong, but to learn about the mistakes of the past and help us find a way to solve the problems of today.

Our group of older children has created a weekend school for younger children in Tbilisi. Internally displaced children from 10 to 13 years of age come to the school to learn English language, math and conflict resolution. We give them role plays and ask them to act out the characters. We give them rules and we teach them to listen to each other and to speak with respect. This is a new project but we want to continue it because the children like this school and they asked us to continue.

The children who experienced the war had a lot of problems in their lives, a lot of psychological problems. They had problems in relationships. They didn’t trust anyone and they were too passive. They didn’t want to do anything because didn’t believe their actions would make any changes.

The program made them believe in themselves and made me believe in myself. Now I have this candle, and using the weekend school I am trying to light new candles with the younger children.

Dr. Sima Samar's Speech

Honorable Ladies and Gentlemen;

I stand here before you as an Afghan who in her country would bear the guilt of being a woman, a Hazara by ethnicity, a woman's right activist and a medical doctor. Such is the situation in Afghanistan at present, but once these were not crimes.

In this situation, I may well be put to death for my activities but in all fairness and honesty, I cannot close my eyes to be safe and I cannot ignore the suffering of millions of women and children who are completely forgotten during two decades of war.

The foundation of all this misery is because of ignorance and illiteracy borne by an utter disregard for the education of an entire generation, a generation that unfortunately came to be baked in a kiln of war and made into warriors for the cause of protecting the world from Communism.

This is why I run schools for boys and girls, hospitals and clinics in Afghanistan and also in Pakistan for afghan refugees.

Our priority is to remove this darkness and undo the tradition of blood shed and warfare through education and providing essential life services. I work for the hope that in the future girls in Afghanistan will be not be punished because of having pens and books in their hands and the women will be able to work outside their homes with full confidence and dignity. I work to see women’s rights counted as human rights.

I receive this prestigious award on behalf of millions of Afghan women and children with empty stomachs who are dreaming of someday getting an education.

Many thanks to the people who recognized my work and give me hopes for the future.