Sydney Peace Prize
Honouring peacemakers in Sydney
By Sarah Norris
It's a noble cause: promoting the agenda of peace and justice in Australia. That's the idea behind the Sydney Peace Prize, the annual award handed out by the Sydney Peace Foundation who this year are giving props to Aboriginal activist Patrick Dodson.
"The jury was impressed with Patrick's work for reconciliation internationally, in Northern Ireland and in South Africa ... and as inaugural chair of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation," says the Peace Foundation director professor Stuart Rees.
Only the second Australian to receive the prize in its ten-year history (although in a nice piece of symmetry, Dodson was the presenter of the prize in 2001 to the first Australian recipient, Governor General Sir William Deane), Dodson joins the ranks of previous winners, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, and last year, the Swedish diplomat and disarmament advocate Dr Hans Blix. Dodson has been described as "the nearest Australia has to a Nelson Mandela."
Patrick Dodson will deliver the 2008 City of Sydney Peace Prize Lecture on Wed 5 Nov at the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall.