Mary Robinson to receive 2016 Stockholm Human Rights Award

Mary Robinson, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997 to 2002, is announced as the 2016 recipient of the Stockholm Human Rights Award. Bestowed annually by the Swedish Bar Association, the International Bar Association and the International Legal Assistance Consortium in recognition of work in the pursuit of advancing international justice and strengthening respect for human rights, the Award will be received in person by Ms Robinson at a ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden on 23 November.

Ms Robinson, the seventh – and first female – President of Ireland, held office between 1990 and 1997. She is widely regarded as having been a transformative figure for Ireland and is credited with revitalising and liberalising the presidency. Upon taking up post at the UN in 1997, she was given the mandate to set the human rights agenda within the organisation and internationally.

Presently, as President of the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice, Ms Robinson staunchly advocates for global justice for people most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change – the poor, the disempowered and the marginalised across the world. She lectures relessly on the topic, travels the globe to engage with all who are concerned for global justice, and calls constantly and persuasively on world leaders for swift, far-reaching and ambitious climate action. The impact of climate change on people and their rights – to food, safe water, health, education and shelter – is what drives her work. 

In a TED talk delivered in September 2015, Ms Robinson lamented her coming late to the issue of climate change and detailed how, when leading Realizing Rights – The Ethical Globalization Initiative and working on issues of development and human rights in African countries, she would hear a phrase uttered ubiquitously: ‘Oh, but things are so much worse now, things are so much worse.’ Exploring what lay behind it, she found the issue to be about climate shocks, such as extreme changes in the weather. The threat that human-induced climate change may one day cause an entire nation to disappear under water, as in the case of Kiriba , has affected her profoundly and accelerated her efforts.