Africa-Press – Angola. The Human Rights Center of the Catholic University of Angola, ADRA-Regional and the citizen Maria Teresa Manuela, were awarded, yesterday, in Luanda, with the National Human Rights Prize, for their contribution and dedication to the promotion, defense and inspection of human rights humans in the country.
The Award, launched in October 2021, received more than 100 applications, from all over the country and the diaspora, where the jury validated 66 applications, in the first phase, from which the laureates emerged. Maria Teresa Manuela, distinguished in the first edition of the Award in the category “Person of the Year in Human Rights”, is the first Angolan commissioner at the African Commission on Human Rights and special rapporteur on prisons, conditions of detention and policing in Africa and on women’s rights. on the continent-2021.
The winner is a Master’s student in Criminal Sciences at the Law School of the Agostinho Neto University, received a certificate of recognition and a check valued at 700,000 kwanzas. The winner has carried out missions for the promotion and defense of human rights, of verification, at national and regional level, as well as participating in the elaboration of reports, training and follow-up of cases.
The Human Rights Center of the Catholic University of Angola, which won in two categories, namely Community and Humanitarian Actions and Human Rights Research, received a sum of 500,000, in the first category, and 650,000 kwanzas, in the second.
The institution has a permanent service of legal support and free of charge to citizens without financial resources, executed through the legal clinic of human rights, by the way the only one in the country. It also provided support to more than three thousand citizens from January 2018 to December 2021, with actions carried out through the permanent service center, located in Largo das Escolas. The center also carried out fieldwork with lawyers, students and members of the institution.
The Catholic University’s center is the first human rights center in the academic field in Angola. In 2021, it launched the Angolan magazine on human rights, and in the same year, it published the compendium of international human rights instruments, having produced two reports on domestic violence and the Covid-19 period. It also published a report on the evolution and freedom of the press in Angola, from 1975 to 2020.
In the category of Culture of Peace and Citizenship, ADRA-Regional won, which is responsible for the provinces of Huíla, Cunene and Namibe, being awarded a certificate of merit and a check in the amount of 400 thousand kwanzas.
The regional organization developed the Youth Participation project for the Local Development of Angola (PAJODEL), with the aim of promoting and increasing the participation of young people from these provinces in the process of formulating and monitoring public policies to support youth.
Award Is A Historic Landmark In The Country
For Minister Francisco Queiroz, the Award, created by Presidential Decree nº 95/20, is a historic event in the country in terms of Human Rights, given its unprecedented nature.
He referred that the National Human Rights Prize is part of the Angolan State’s National Human Rights Strategy. With the initiative, the Executive intends to recognize and encourage the role of those who contribute with their dedication to the promotion, defense and inspection of human rights in the country.
In his speech, delivered yesterday, at the award ceremony, Francisco Queiroz indicated that one of the pillars of the National Human Rights Strategy is the public recognition of the merit of the national actors involved in the great challenge and mission of advocating for the access of all citizens , without any discrimination to their political, civil, economic, social, cultural and environmental rights.
“Social experience shows that the formal recognition of rights and citizenship is not enough, we need to create and make real and effective the mechanisms and legal instruments that allow the full exercise of these rights”, underlined the Minister of Justice and Human Rights, Francisco Queiroz.
He added that the “way forward is the commitment of the organs and institutions of the State and of society as a whole towards Human and Citizenship Rights”.
“The recognition or condemnation of those who have responsibilities regarding human rights, in each society, is, in the first place, a prerogative of national actors”, underlined Francisco Queiroz, stressing that it must be understood that each country, as well as its institutions and its citizens, have the right to play a leading role in defending the dignity of the human beings who live there.
The minister stated that human dignity is a natural attribute of every human being, and therefore deserves “equal recognition, protection and respect, anywhere in the world”.
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