RFK Center Travels to 12th World Summit of Nobel Peace Prize Laureates

(2012-04-17) The Robert F. Kennedy Center is proud to be a program partner of the 12^th World Summit of Nobel Peace Prize Laureates, which will be held on April 23-25 in Chicago. Nobel Peace Prize Winners from around the world will take part in a three-day conversation about global human rights, and will use this event as an opportunity to work with the RFK Center’s RFK Speak Truth To Power (STTP) and RFK Partners for Human Rights (PHR) programs.

The Nobel Summit under the theme of "Speak Up, Speak Out" includes rich educational components. In the lead-up to this special series of meetings, STTP has collaborated with the Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union to introduce an enhanced STTP curriculum that includes the stories of heroic Nobel Peace prize winners such as Lech Walesa, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Jody Williams, who will be visiting Chicago schools and meeting with students on the opening day of the Summit. Additionally, STTP has partnered with Scholastic to launch a new website that allows teachers and students across the country to participate in the Summit‘s activities.

PHR is hoping to further its advocacy efforts by bringing a number of RFK Human Rights Award Laureates to Chicago. U.S.-based Laureates Lucas Benitez of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) in Florida and community organizer Stephen Bradberry of New Orleans, Louisiana will be in attendance. Our most recent Laureate, Frank Mugisha of Uganda, will be in Chicago to advocate for the rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Intersex (LGBTI) people at a moment when leading human rights defenders, including recent Nobel Peace Prize Winner Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, are reluctant to extend human rights protections to LGBTI people. In fact, in March, Sirleaf gave an interview to the Guardian openly supporting laws criminalizing homosexuality in her home country of Liberia. Mugisha hopes to meet with Nobel Peace Prize Laureates at the Summit and call on them to publicly recognize LGBTI rights as human rights.

Not in Chicago? Didn’t secure a ticket to the Summit in time? You can still keep up with all the excitement by following along on Twitter with hash tag #nobel. The RFK Center President Kerry Kennedy, several RFK Center employees, and RFK Human Rights Award Laureate Frank Mugisha will all be tweeting live from the events.

• RFK Center @RFKCenter
• Kerry Kennedy @KerryKennedyRFK
• John Heffernan, Director of RFK Speak Truth To Power @STTP_RFKennedy
• Fernanda Katz Ellenberg, Senior Advocacy Officer of RFK Partners for Human Rights @FKE_RFKennedy
• Salvador Sarmiento, Advocacy Officer of RFK Partners for Human Rights @SGS_RFKennedy
• Wade McMullen, Donald M. Wilson Fellow @wademc
• Frank Mugisha, 2011 RFK Human Rights Award Laureate @frankmugisha
• Lucas Benitez, 2003 RFK Human Rights Award Laureate @ciw