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Justapaz Receives Swedish Peace Award

STOCKHOLM, Sweden/BOGOTÁ, Colombia — The Swedish Fellowship of Reconciliation (SWEFOR) has awarded the SWEFOR Prize for Nonviolence 2006 to Justapaz for its work in Colombia.

Justapaz is the acronym for the Christian Center for Justice, Peace and Nonviolent Action, a ministry of the Mennonite Church in Colombia for the past 16 years. Jenny Neme, director of Justapaz, travelled to Sweden to receive the award in Stockholm on September 23.

Each year, SWEFOR awards the prize to some person or organization for outstanding work for nonviolence. Last year's prize went to a Palestinian Quaker, Jean Zaru.

The SWEFOR Board of Directors said that it chose Justapaz for the award because “Justapaz in Colombia is a source of inspiration for individuals and other nonviolent movements on how it is possible to work with active nonviolence in spite of the risks of a violent society.”

The statement cited the work of Justapaz in organizing nonviolence workshops for pastors, church leaders and young people in areas of armed conflict and in mobilizing people to make peace and justice work visible. An example named was the demonstrations around the international day of peace in September.

This year, Justapaz joined other institutions in initiating a national consultation on peace. For the first time, churches who gathered there adopted a proposal for peace and a framework to carry out the proposal in Colombia.

“For this important and strategic work, SWEFOR awards Justapaz the Prize for Nonviolence, 2006,” said the citation.

This is the third time in two years that a Colombian Mennonite or Mennonite organization received international recognition for peace work. In 2005, Ricardo Torres was given a national award in Honduras for his defense of human rights in his work to demobilize gangs in that country. Also last year, Ricardo Esquivia received the Tanenbaum Peace Award in New York City for his peace work over many years.

— from SWEFOR and Justapaz releases