Amnesty International has honored climate change activist Greta Thunberg and the Fridays for Future movement of school-children with its Ambassador of Conscience Award for 2019
The awards ceremony coincided with events around the world, honoring Fridays for Future activists who represent the movement.
“This award is for all of those millions of people, young people, around the world who together make up the movement called Fridays for Future. All these fearless youth, fighting for their future. A future they should be able to take for granted. But as it looks now, they cannot,” the young Swedish student, who has shot to fame for her strong commitment to action on climate change, said after receiving the award.
“We, who together are the movement Fridays for Future, we are fighting for our lives. But not only that, we are also fighting for our future children and grandchildren, for future generations, for every single living being on earth, whose biosphere we share, whose biosphere we are stealing, whose biosphere we are ruining. We are fighting for everyone.”
“Activism works. So, what I’m telling you to do now, is to act. Because no one is too small to make a difference. I’m urging all of you to take part in the global climate strikes on September 20th and September 27th.”
The human rights organization says Ambassador of Conscience Award is Amnesty International’s highest honor, celebrating people who have shown unique leadership and courage in standing up for human rights – people who have acted on their conscience and used their talents to inspire others.
Amnesty International chose to give the 2019 award to Greta because of her efforts to raise awareness of the climate crisis.
“Her decision to miss school every Friday starting in August 2018 and instead protest outside the Swedish parliament until it took more serious action to tackle the climate emergency kicked off the Fridays for Future movement. It has since mobilized more than one million young people from all over the world.”
This award was presented ahead of the Peoples’ Summit on Climate, Rights and Human Survival Summit, co-organized by Amnesty International.
The event will welcome a considerable number of youth leaders and aims to galvanize the human rights community to urgently scale-up its efforts on climate justice. And with youth activists from 115 countries planning to stage climate protests from September 20-27, these young leaders aren’t about to let up the pressure, the Amnesty said.
