The Human Rights and Nursing Award is presented to any nurse in recognition of an outstanding commitment to human rights and exemplifying the essence of nursing’s philosophy of humanity.

The Directors and local Management Committee review all nominations for the Human Rights Award annually.

Criteria for the Human Rights and Nursing Award

1. The contributions and accomplishments of the nominee must be of international significance to human rights.
2. The contributions of the nominee have influenced health care and/or nursing practice.

Nominations

Nominations can be made by anyone and at any time, with or without the knowledge of the nominee.

Two Awards are given each year.

Nominations will be reviewed by end of September in each calendar year for Awards to be given in the next year.

Nominations should contain the following information:

• The name and contact details of the nominee
• The reasons for making the nomination, ie specific achievements in the field of human rights by the nominee
• Two supporting statements from friends or working colleagues of the nominee
• Name and contact details of the person making the nomination, and relationship to the nominee

The nominee will be contacted by a member of ICNE in due course. The nominee will be expected to travel to the conference organised by ICNE and held yearly in different locations. The travel and accommodation costs are covered by the Award. The nominees will also receive a personal cheque, the amount of which may vary.

Citations for Human Rights and Nursing Awards 2011

Citation for Masitsela Mhlanga and Thabsile Dlamini

The two colleagues, Masitsela Mhlanga and Thabsile Dlamini, are sharing one award, but separate citations follow. They have worked closely together for many years in the Swaziland Nurses Association. To understand their work in context, a few details are necessary.
Swaziland is a small country, with just over a million inhabitants and the world’s largest proportion of people suffering from HIV/AIDS. King Mswati III is its absolute monarch. In 2006 there were 17 outreach clinics in four regions and only 65 health-care workers to see to 96,000 patients a year. The kingdom has about 8000 health-care workers altogether, of whom 3054 are nurses. This makes a ratio of about 35 nurses per 100,000 of population, compared with about 935 nurses per 100,000 of population in the UK.

Masitsela Mhlanga
From early in his professional life Masitsela demonstrated strong signs of leadership, coupled with passion for his work and the rights of those he served.
In February 1999 Masitsela, who had quickly risen to become President of the Swaziland Nurses Association (SNA), led the first-ever nurses’ strike, which forced the government after 10 years of negotiations to recognize nurses and enabled the Association to gain status and allowed nurses to sit in collective bargaining chambers to negotiate nurses’ conditions of service, including salaries.
By 2004, Masitsela had seen most of his class of 1994 nursing school colleagues disappear to jobs overseas. Together with partners in the SNA, in particular Thabsile Dlamini, by then the General Secretary of the SNA, he led the first ever high level technical meeting in Swaziland to discuss and take resolutions that compelled the country to take a leading role in curbing migration and resulted in a near 50% rise in nurses’ salaries and other benefits for all civil servants.  
As the rest of the population, high numbers of nurses were affected by HIV/AIDS, which severely impacted the health care available in the country. Masitsela established a Wellness Centre exclusively for health care workers to receive treatment and counselling. It is funded by a unique combination of organizations (the ICN and the Danish Nurses Association among them) and businesses. The model has since been replicated in a number of southern African countries and has been applauded by Physicians for Human Rights Lawyers and the World Health Organization.
Masitsela and Thabsile came briefly to the attention of the international nursing press in 2000. Nurses in rural health facilities were being attacked by robbers looking for money. Some members of parliament suggested that nurses should carry arms to work for protection, but they refused, stating that arms would deter the public from seeking health care, and demanded that the government provide protection. Nurses had stopped taking fees from patients but continued providing health services to all who came to the facilities, which led the government to decide to remove payment of fees in the primary facilities and health centres. This had the effect of improved access to care for poor people as now services were affordable.

Another of Masitsela’s achievements was to lead the SNA executive in stopping parliament from passing a public health bill that refused access to nurses and other health professionals to positions in the health directorate. Parliament threw the bill out and demanded that the Ministry of Health do proper consultations with all concerned.

Masitsela is a well-known speaker at HIV/AIDS conferences the world over, but the achievement he is most proud of is the Wellness Centre, because there are now many fewer funerals of health care workers in Swaziland.

Thabsile Dlamini
Thabsile qualified in 1984 as a general nurse and midwife. At the school of nursing she was the president of the students’ association, a skill and position that stood her in good stead when she became the General Secretary of the Swaziland Nurses Association. She spearheaded the revision and drafting of a new constitution for the association, aimed at establishing it as an independent, democratic and professional organization with bargaining and lobbying powers, which came into force in 1992.
She pioneered the composition of the patient rights charter; she led negotiations to ensure that nurses get protective clothing in given situations; and during her free time she works at Hope House and Home for patients with terminal illness, training staff and relatives in looking after their loved ones.

The Girl Child Education Trust is also Thabsile’s brain child. The GCEF supports the primary and secondary schooling of girls under the age of 18 in developing countries whose nurse parent or parents have died, paying for fees, uniforms, shoes and books. Because it is usually the girl child in Africa who takes responsibility of the household when parents die, even if there are elder brothers, most of the time the girl drops out of school to care for everyone. According to the latest data (February 2011), the trust supported 226 girls in Zambia, Kenya, Swaziland and Uganda. This program was established with support from ICN and is administered by them.

Thabsile has worked tirelessly, risking her life, being on the verge of arrest when confronted with police during industrial action, and sacrificing her own personal career advancements for the sake of nurses’ rights, putting off academic studies twice. However, this did not deter her and she pursued her mission of being the mouth piece of nurses and as a result significant changes have taken place in the professional and political arenas in Swaziland.

Citation for Ana Luisa Aranha e Silva

From 1992, when Ana Luisa Aranha began work on her Master’s studies, she brought her concerns for a theoretical underpinning of psychosocial rehabilitation to the attention of her employers at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. After gaining her doctorate she became professor of mental health and psychiatry in the School of Nursing, working as a researcher and practitioner, and developing undergraduate and post-graduate teaching in mental health.

Ana Luisa’s inspiration for her work is Brazil’s commitment to ‘Solidarity Economics.’ In today’s Brazil about 50% of workers are outside of the capitalist system where wages and rights are protected. Since 2005 the solidarity economy is a policy of the Ministry of Labour and Employment as a movement to a form of economic organization and collective self-management in response to all kinds of exclusions at the work place caused by capitalism, especially those of race, gender, age, and education. Thus Ana Luisa’s concern is that users of mental health services needed to be actively involved in managing their own work and creating their own lives and looking for opportunities to realise this.

In 2006 she started the ‘Bibitanta’ under the auspices of the health system’s Centre for Psychosocial Care Itaim Bibi, the city of São Paulo, and the School of Nursing at the University of São Paulo, and the Franco Basaglia Association. This is an innovative collective project, combining theory and practice, ethics, mental health and the solidarity economy. The political guidelines are strict: there needs to be cooperation, self-management, valid economic activity, and solidarity to maintain and achieve a healthy environment and community for the welfare of workers and consumers. Thus all the activities of the Bar are decided collectively and evaluated from the standpoint of economic feasibility. The Bar has four teams, one each for buying, cooking, cleaning and serving, rotating the workers. Mental health service users, staff and students are all invited to work in the Bar on a basis of complete equality. All workers (except staff employed by USP) receive the same salary, considering ‘value-hours’ rather than income. The trustees of the Bar comprise a nurse, an auxiliary nurse, a psychologist, a professor and students from USP.

The Bar is now a business that runs a restaurant. It also serves snacks and meals at events around the university and other cultural, scientific and social functions, focusing on Brazilian cuisine. It began as a teaching extension project within the mental health services of the School of Nursing, and students learn new ways there of dealing with professional relationships and with the concerns of integration of every person into the world of work, which can sometimes be an unexpected place. Ana Luisa points out that ‘there is a substantial difference between being a user of a mental health service who is an employee and being an employee who is a user of mental health services.’ In the perspective of the Brazilian Psychiatric Reform, the change of social position from being seen as incapable, dangerous and irresponsible to being responsible, creative, and a source of knowledge is the center of the action and represents a challenge for educational institutions.

Groups of graduate and Master’s students from the School of Nursing have regular sessions in The Bar and conduct research there. The Bar produces economic activity through non-competitive partnerships that generate income, and tangible and intangible assets that were not available to people before it opened. This brings not only a cash income to service users and students, but  knowledge of how to deal with people, learning, caring, teamwork, thinking about the common good, learning from mistakes, trying to fix them, and spreading the knowledge gained.

Everyone is conscious of how much Ana Luisa inspires the ethos of the Bar, the teaching and principles of living in solidarity with everyone, and how much working together ennobles the lives of all concerned.

Citations for Human Rights and Nursing Awards 2010

Citation for British Columbia Centre for Disease Control Outreach Street Nursing Program

This citation is for the whole team of the Outreach Street Nursing Program of BCCDC.

The BCCDC was established in 1988 as an STI/HIV prevention program, today comprising full and part-time nurses and healthcare workers. The team is committed to improving the quality of life of people who are among the most marginalised and stigmatised in society, typically those who use drugs, who are homeless, have mental health problems, are involved in the sex industry, have been trafficked, incarcerated, or who have become rootless for any number of reasons. The team goes out to meet and provide care for clients in settings that include the streets, alleys, parks, hotels, internet chat sites, etc. It begins with what is important to the individuals, and therefore its program is complex and changing, responsive and collaborative.

The team has a clinical as well as an educative role. The clinical role is focussed not only on access to health care, but also to food, housing, income and other services that are crucial in addressing the health and social needs of vulnerable people. Harm reduction and health promotion approaches are used. The team develops relationships with individuals and organisations to build the pathways that enhance personal and community health.

In their educative role, the team members collaborate with, support and mentor nurses from other health authorities and across the province. The Outreach Nurses recently partnered with documentary film maker Nettie Wild and Canada Wild Productions to create and produce an educational interactive DVD called Bevel Up; Drugs, Users and Outreach Nursing as a way to share knowledge with other nurses. Health Canada, the National Film Board, and the British Columbia Nurses Union provided funding,. Bevel Up is a 45-minute documentary with 3.5 hours of additional chapters, nursing reflections and topic areas. It has received several awards and is available in English, French, and Russian (for use in Russia and eastern Europe). Bevel Up has been influential as a tool for community development and a catalyst for dialogue in health and social policy circles. Several of the nurses have worked through the program for HIV prevention in Vietnam and the Balkans.

The DVD has been shown widely in nursing education programmes and used by clinical educators throughout Canada and in the USA. Human rights violations can exist in the design and implementation of any health policies and health services. The team recognizes this and their practice is therefore based on an understanding that health and human rights act in synergy. They have become expert practitioners and passionate political advocates and educators, ensuring that fair and equitable treatment of all people is practiced. Values of caring, social justice, respect and dignity therefore guide their work, aware that a vibrant society depends on a strong link between human rights and health.

One of the group’s sponsors wrote ‘In this country [Canada] I can think of no other group so deserving of this award.

Citation for Robert Simons

A specific incident sparked Robert Simons’ interest in human rights. While on a Dutch Red Cross assignment in Sudan in 1985/86 he was confronted with a political situation whereby some 60,000 refugees and displaced persons would have been denied any form of medical assistance on ethnic grounds, which he was not willing to accept. This led to a deep commitment to health and human rights ever since.

On return to the Netherlands in 1986, Robert became a board member of the Johannes Wier Foundation (JWF), an organization for health professionals for defending and promoting human rights in all areas of health. He began to run workshops for nurses and doctors who work in various settings, such as the armed forces, prisons, police, and refugee camps. He became an activist for equal health rights for undocumented people, supported colleagues facing human rights dilemmas, and he joined and supervised fact finding missions in Romania, Gaza, Pakistan and the former Yugoslavia into health related human rights violations.

In 2001 Robert became the chairperson of the International Federation of Health and Human Rights Organizations (IFHHRO). In that capacity he has played a key role in developing and expanding IFHHRO, including human rights and advocacy training for health professionals throughout the world, establishing regional partners in Uganda, India and Peru with others being planned, and he was instrumental in the successful initiative to establish the post of Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health within the UN human rights system, which was instituted in 2002 and is now strongly supported by IFHHRO. The IFHHRO focuses on implementing the Right to Health, mobilizing health professionals and organizing annual conferences on specific issues, such as HIV/AIDS (Utrecht, Netherlands, 2004), Engendering the Right to Health (Mumbai, India, 2005), the Right to Health and Exclusions (Lima, Peru, 2006) and the Right to Health and Health Systems (Harare, Zimbabwe, 2008).

With all this work, Robert is also the Principal Nurse and Division manager of the Amsterdam Academic Medical Centre, where he has pioneered nursing research, and organised and promoted the prestigious Anna Reynvaan lecture and award, given yearly to a nurse who can combine the best of nursing in hospital and community, research and teaching.   In his activities, Robert has always played a stimulating role, starting new initiatives and showing resilience in expanding the international network of health professionals for human rights. He has designed human rights curricula and published various articles and edited texts in Dutch and the international nursing press. His basic credo and message is the inclusion of human rights in the daily work of nurses and doctors, and this drives him to help and teach his colleagues to do the same.

Citations for Human Rights and Nursing Awards 2009

Citation for Branka Rimac

In 1995, during the civil war that affected the countries of the former Yugoslavia, a Croatian community in Nova Bila in Bosnia, was surrounded and cut off from a range of services, including health care. Branka Rimac was the senior nurse member of a convoy that travelled to the site and helped to establish a hospital in the church of St Francis. This project was undertaken at enormous personal risk and arose from Branka’s involvement in the Zagreb Regional Group of the Croatian Nurses’ Association. People of all religious and political backgrounds and all ages were treated in this hospital, with the specific aim of ensuring that further scars would not settle on the national consciousness. Branka had not only put herself at personal risk, but provided leadership in undertaking this work.

Subsequently, Branka became active in developing the nurse associations in her own country as well as with nursing organizations in Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia, meeting also with Slovenia and Serbia. In 2003, the Croatian Nurses Association elected Branka as its president, and she still serves in this role. Some of her achievements in this role are:

• Negotiating membership of the International Council of Nurses, giving the Association the status of National Nurses Association
• Membership of the European Nurses Association in 2005, which opened the door to significant support for the development of nursing and midwifery from the wider professional community in Europe
• Development of firm links with the Croatian Trade Union of Nurses and Medical Technicians to enable joint working on staff development and representation
• Collaboration with the American Organization of Nurse Executives, which has resulted in yearly conferences to help in the development of nurse and midwifery leadership in Croatia
• Establishment of Technical Assistance Information Exchange Office (TAIEX) workshops in Croatia in order to address the development needs of nurses and midwives in preparation for Croatia to accede to the European Union

These and other achievements are significant in a society that has suffered from the withdrawal into ethnic and religious groupings and divisions. Branca has devised systems of working across boundaries, drawing people and organisations together and achieving ownership of goals that are for the benefit of society, not simply for individual professions. She has demonstrated the highest standards of ethical awareness in pursuit of social goals that are enabling a country to build on what is good in the past and develop ways that make it part of a stronger and more vibrant community.

Citation for Kathy Mellor

One of Kathy Mellor’s sponsors for the Human Rights and Nursing Award 2009 wrote ‘Kathy is a true humanitarian, now known internationally’.

Kathy has and continues to work with sick newborn babies as a neonatal nurse practitioner. In addition, Kathy has worked tirelessly to support maternal and neonatal healthcare in other countries, focusing on regions where health care is severely compromised by lack of education and limited resources. Countries as diverse as Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia, Mongolia, Russia, Nigeria, and Vietnam have benefited from the support Kathy and her team deliver.

In 1984 Kathy travelled to Colombia, South America, at the invitation of UNICEF to assess an early discharge programme for preterm babies, which had shown evidence of a reduction in neonatal mortality. As a result, Kathy helped to establish ‘Kangaroo care’ in the UK, which is now used throughout the world, and in particular benefits people in developing countries, being recommended by WHO.

In 2000 Kathy was invited to participate in a project in Nagorno-Karabakh, a small country whose infrastructure had suffered badly by prolonged war in the early 1990s. An aid programme to refurbish the only maternity hospital in the region included funding to improve care and facilities in the neonatal department, and Kathy successfully implemented a programme that had a significant effect on the outcomes of sick newborn babies. When the project ended, Kathy funded her own trips to the hospital, bringing not only supplies, but encouragement and support to enable doctors and nurses to continue developing their skills in this poverty stricken environment.

Kathy realised that there was much that could be achieved both in Nagorno-Karabakh and in neighbouring Armenia. In 2006 she founded BirthLink a charity whose aim is to provide support and education to all health care professionals involved in maternal and newborn care.

Through BirthLink Kathy was able to continue the work already started in the Maternity and Children’s Hospital in Stepanakert, Nagorno-Karabakh, and many of the babies and mothers would not have survived without the contribution made by her total devotion and passionate desire to help others.

Kathy’s work with BirthLink is selfless and inspirational, as others who travel with BirthLink across the world giving their time and support voluntarily, are quick to acknowledge. A Medal of Gratitude awarded by the President of Nagorno-Karabakh in 2008 is a testimony to how highly regarded she is by the people of that country.

The most common question from people whose lives have been touched by Kathy is ‘why do you come here to help us?’ Her reply is always ‘because I can help to make a difference.’ Kathy has a rare talent for enthusing the people she works with, and her deep desire to help the most vulnerable mothers and babies goes hand in hand with her respect, compassion and support for the caregivers, who in the long term will be the ones making the ‘difference’.

Citations for Human Rights and Nursing Awards 2008

Sister Teresita Hinnegan is a member of the Medical Mission Sisters, an international community of Catholic Sisters, whose work is in health care, education, the development of women and justice for people whose human rights are denied. Sister Teresita is a nurse-midwife and has graduate degrees in social work with a major in social planning.

Sr Teresita is an icon in Philadelphia, her birthplace, where she is known to many key policy makers. She has always had a passion for teaching others to look at the "big picture" of health and illness, and especially access to health care for underserved populations, particularly women and children.

Nobody was surprised, therefore, when at the age of 80 and after retiring from a long academic career at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, she was working in inner city Philadelphia again, this time with women who have experienced violence and abuse. This was born out of her deep conviction that the structures that condone any violence against women have to be challenged at all levels, be they cultural, educational, political or religious.

With a dedicated team, Sister Teresita secured a building to develop a program that supports women affected by commercial sexual exploitation (CSE). This endeavor, Dawn's Place, is now a non-profit organization that can provide long term trauma recovery and comprehensive support services to both internationally and domestically trafficked women. Dawn's Place works on the premise that commercial sexual exploitation is a violation of human rights and that by raising public awareness through education, prevention strategies, public policy reform and community collaborations changes will come about.

Sr. Teresita's values of integrity, justice, and service to the most vulnerable people do not allow her to take credit for the many interventions she and her students have had in the lives of women – whether poor, disenfranchised, or abused. However, her colleagues have witnessed the positive outcomes of Sr. Teresita's commitment and care for such women, and how that commitment has expanded through the work of hundreds of students over the years. One colleague says it all: "her compassion for all is legendary".

One of Emmie Chanika’s supporters for this Award started a long list of her attributes by stating that "she is a State Registered Nurse". This fact has clearly guided her wide-ranging career in the defence of democracy and human rights.

Emmie Chanika served as an officer in the Malawi Red Cross; on a Commission to investigate the deaths of four politicians; she initiated and founded the Prison Reform Committee; set up a blood donor scheme; served on the Malawi Housing Corporation; is a paralegal officer; and has been the Executive Director of the Civil Liberties Committee (CILIC) for many years.

In this capacity especially, she has exhibited her determination to fight for the rights of children and women. She ha addressed press conferences on violence against children and women. She has organized seminars and protest awareness marches to address issues of violence against children and women. She has been constantly vocal and uncompromising on issues of sexual abuse of children and women, ritual killings, the sale of body parts, and grabbing property of the deceased from women and children. She has written books, carried out research, and lectured and presented papers on most human rights issues in all parts of the world. She is a well-known figure in her native Malawi, but also in the whole of southern Africa, and also by her regular attendance and lobbying at the Commonwealth Head of States and Government summits.

Her work, while commendable and well received by many people, has only been possible at great personal cost to herself and her family, as not everyone has appreciate her fight and struggle on behalf of disenfranchised people. She has suffered police arrests and intimidation, has been assaulted publicly by prominent politicians, and threatened because of her activism. She does not work to please anyone, but remains constant in her belief and mission to improve the lives and rights of women and children in Malawi. Mrs Chanika's work is an admirable example of the link that a seasoned health professional is able to make with human rights advocacy.

Citations for Human Rights and Nursing Awards 2007

Claire Bertschinger’s main theme is that ‘We can and must transcend our differences, and make humanity, not economics, our highest priority in life.’

One needs to read Claire’s book “Moving Mountains” to be able to keep up with the many areas and places of the world where she has worked as a Red Cross nurse. Without realising it at the time, Claire was the person whose pictures inspired Bob Geldof and Band Aid and Live Aid, the biggest relief programme the world had ever seen, and which raised more than £150m and saved an estimated two million lives in Africa. One of the most enduring images of the Ethiopian famine that shocked the world in 1984 was that of the young International Red Cross nurse who, surrounded by thousands of starving people and with limited supplies, had the terrible task of choosing which children to feed, knowing that those she turned away might not last the night. A BBC crew had filmed a few scenes and the world heard about Ethiopia’s plight.

Claire went on to ever more dangerous postings, and even more impossible situations, always as part of Red Cross teams in areas of conflict. She was in Lebanon, Afghanistan, Uganda, Togo, Sierra Leone, and back to Ethiopia. She ran feeding stations, visited prisoners, organised rescue missions, and set up emergency hospitals. What is remarkable is that for over 20 years Claire thought she had been a failure in Ethiopia, and only when she returned to Ethiopia in 2004 and heard Bob Geldof talk about her role and how it motivated him into setting up Live Aid, that she recognised the work she had done as valuable.

Eventually she herself fell victim to malaria and her Red Cross field work came to an end. She now works at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine where she is lecturer and Course Organiser of the Diploma in Tropical Nursing, training nurses to work in tropical and resource-poor areas of the world. In one of the many interviews available on websites, she said: ‘I decided that ... by writing my life experiences so far, I could show the world that an ordinary person can overcome educational, emotional and physical difficulties and still make a difference to our planet.’ Claire continues her extraordinary work now through her book and in presentations and lectures far and wide in Europe.

Nurith Wagner has a life-long commitment to human rights and ethical behaviour in nursing. She has worked consistently and effectively to raise awareness and to improve the ethical standards of nursing care in Israel and internationally. She does this on a political, as well as on a professional level. Indeed, it is difficult to chose even a few of the many activities that have Nurit’s mark on them to mention.

Her input to the multidisciplinary committee on preparing the Law of the Dying Patient was crucial in the 1990s. Since its inception, Nurit has been a member of the National Bioethics Committee, where she is a strong advocate for patient and human rights.

Nurit also founded the Ethics Bureau of the Israel Nurses Association, which she chairs. This Bureau has a strong track record of public health, human rights and ethics advocacy dealing with issues such as ethical guidelines for nursing research; ethical approaches to dealing with disabled health workers; respecting the rights of informal caregivers/families in the formal health system.

Perhaps the best evidence of her commitments is her involvement in Machsomwatch. On a weekly basis Nurith joins other women in observing and intervening at the numerous military checkpoints (machsom). She helps sick Palestinian patients get medical treatments and watches over the human rights situation at the checkpoints, as much as a wrong situation permits to do right. Nurith made a film on the checkpoints and Machsomwatch. She has shown the film and discussed the organization’s human rights work at international meetings, showing how nurses can make a difference, even in dire circumstances.

This still leaves much to be said about other involvements in local, national and international forums that claim Nurit’s attention and time, much of it done and given on a voluntary basis.

Citations for Human Rights and Nursing Awards 2006

Normally two Awards are given per year; in 2006 only one Award was given, but to the entire clinic of five nurses in Gaza City, the Gaza Strip.

The Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated but isolated areas in the world. Access in and out of it is extremely difficult, and patients in need of specialist eye care have sought treatment at the St John Eye Clinic in Gaza city. A satellite centre of the St John Eye Hospital in Jerusalem, it provides primary and secondary eye care. Ideally patients with severe eye disease are referred to the base hospital in Jerusalem but in recent years this has largely been impossible because of the restrictions of access in and out of Gaza. This means that babies with congenital eye disease, people with diabetes in need of highly specialised surgery, or patients needing sight-saving corneal grafts must be monitored and treated by the staff of the St John Eye Clinic, waiting for an opportunity for them to pass on to Jerusalem. Sometimes access to Jerusalem is impossible and the only alternative is to send patients in need of urgent treatment to Egypt, via the Rafah border of Gaza.

The St John Ophthalmic Outpatient clinic and Cataract Day Case surgical Centre was opened in 1992 in response to the increasing need for effective eye care in the Gaza Strip at a time when there was no other cataract surgery available for a population of one million. Many children in Gaza suffer from congenital eye disease that requires early detection and treatment, which was not available. The day the clinic was officially opened there was a strict curfew in effect in the area and the staff had to dodge military patrols in order to reach the clinic.

The nursing staff are Hanan Zaálan, Fouad Najjar, Ghazi El Baba, Mohamed Barakat, and Abdallah El Baba.

The majority of the residents of Gaza are refugees who lost their homes in 1948 or in 1967. Most live in one or other of the refugee camps in the Gaza Strip. All the nurses in the St John Clinic live in refugee camps.

The lifestyle for these nurses has been marked by the military and political situation. They have risked life and limb traveling to and from the Clinic, despite the fact that most of them live a short distance from it. Unpredictable attacks with missiles have happened close to the homes of all of the nursing staff. Sudden closure of roads has trebled the distance from home to the Clinic and several times the only access to Gaza city from the camps was to walk up to six km along the beach.

Close liaison with the base hospital has for long periods been only by telephone or e-mail. The staff has dealt with shortage of supplies usually obtained from Jerusalem in a unique manner, utilising any contact lucky enough to be able to get in or out of Gaza. Fortunately access to Gaza has eased in recent weeks, and the Orthoptist from the hospital is able to visit twice a month. The nurses screen and monitor hundreds of children suffering from squint who, if left untreated, will suffer amblyopia and loss of effective use of the affected eyes.

Hanan Zaálan is the only woman member of the staff, holding a BSc in Nursing. Her home was originally in the Beach refugee camp but after marriage she moved close to the Israeli Settlement of Nezarim. The direct road into the city and to the clinic was closed five years ago and her journey was often punctuated with crossfire. Frequently she was unable to leave her home, or could not return to it after a day’s work in the clinic.

Fouad Najjar is the nursing coordinator and has been in charge of the nursing staff and developing the nursing care of patients since the clinic opened. He holds a BSc in Nursing and MA in Nursing Management. As the political situation continued to deteriorate, thousands of Palestinians lost their jobs, and the economic situation of many of the patients became dire and many could not afford to pay for their treatments. Fouad looked for ways and means to help them and their families.

Ghazi El Baba is an Ophthalmic Practical Nurse living in the Bureij refugee camp. Many homes were demolished in order to make the roads wider for passing army convoys. The closure of the roads also lengthened his journey to the clinic considerably and he was no longer able to drive his car. Several missile strikes have been close to his home.

Mohamed Barakat is a Licensed Practical Nurse who experienced a very difficult time living in the Rafah refugee camp. His home was severely damaged in 2003. The road to Rafah was closed many times and for long periods. Most recently the road was opened only sporadically in the night and Mohamed slept in his car at the checkpoint, waiting for it to open in order to get to work.

Abdallah El Baba is a Registered General Nurse, also living in Bureij refugee camp. He was for over 20 years a senior nurse at the St John Eye Hospital in Jerusalem. In 2001 travel between Jerusalem and Gaza became increasingly difficult, and finally impossible, forcing him to give up his job. He has recently taken the post of Recovery Nurse in the clinic after the surgical unit was extended to include surgery under general anaesthesia.

These nurse have displayed loyalty and perseverance in the interest of providing an invaluable service to a population suffering in a siege situation which, until recent times, only deteriorated. They have, with the two ophthalmologists who serve the clinic, continued to function totally independently when all access to the base hospital in Jerusalem was cut for years at a time. Their team spirit and innovative approach to work under very difficult circumstances is admired in Gaza, by their colleagues in the base hospital in Jerusalem, and by all who have heard about them.

Citations for Human Rights and Nursing Awards 2005

Sister Grace Kodiyan is a nurse and member of the religious congregation, Sisters of Notre Dame, and was nominated by her peers for this Award. Since 1987 she has dedicated her life to the poorest of poor people in Bihar, North India. There she started working from a health centre in Gahiri, reaching out to villages that are not only geographically but also economically and socially remote, by a network of health and community development programmes. She has used a rights-based approach to ensure that the women and girls of the villages, who were the most deprived, could receive education and therefore have opportunities for community-based decision making.

Only some of the activities with which Sister Grace is involved are: conducting mobile health care and immunisation clinics in the remote villages; training village health workers for mother and child health care; family counselling to prevent abortion and female infanticide; organising self help groups in the villages for sustainable livelihoods and well being; empowering village women to take up social issues; conducting and promoting non-formal and formal educational programmes for women and children not going to school in the villages; organising people's movements to fight against bonded labour, child labour, and the evils of the caste system, and other social issues that have adverse effects on the development and well-being of village people; and income generating programmes by growing vegetables and rearing goats, pigs and buffaloes. All these were done without even electricity, although that may now be installed. Although Sister Grace left Gahiri in October 2003, the health-outreach programmes are continued by competent medical personnel. She herself moved to another centre at Piro, to start the same work all over again.

Sister Grace is an active member of various health movements and also promotes indigenous medicines. She is a core group member of INSA-INDIA (International Nursing Service Association) and Convenor of the District Forum of Bihar Voluntary Health Association.

Fidelis Mudimu is a registered nurse, psychiatric nurse and mdwife. It seems that these days his midwifery skills are used in a very different direction: to provide medical and psychological rehabilitation for victims of organised violence and torture (OVT). He is the programme manager of the Amani Trust, a local Zimbabwean human rights organisation.

Fidelis runs the clinical programme of the Amani Trust, and he is also responsible for local, regional and international liaison for the organisation. He does short-term counselling for survivors of torture, in the process assessing them for long-term medical and psychological rehabilitation under various specialists throughout the country. Sometimes he personally has to evacuate people to places of safety when they are in extreme danger. Fidelis has also helped to established a network of ‘peace monitors’ throughout Zimbabwe, whose role is to monitor violence, and first- and second-generation human rights abuses, such as access to food and health care. The Amani Trust has been under constant threat by the Government and has negative publicity on almost a daily basis in the state controlled press. Sometimes the office of the Trust had to operate off grounds; it has been raided and searched. New legislation is threatening to ban all democracy and governance activities, yet Fidelis and the Amani Trust continue to do their work.

Fidelis has represented the Amani Trust and the Zimbabwe Human Rights Forum, a coalition of twelve of the main human rights non-governmental organisations in Zimbabwe, at various international meetings, such as the Dublin Platform for Human Rights Defenders, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, and the Netherlands Institute for Southern Africa, and various others. At these meetings he has articulated the current Zimbabwean human rights situation and the existence of organised violence and torture.

Citations for Human Rights and Nursing Awards 2003

Cathy Crowe, RN and Street Nurse, said to an ‘Inquiry on Homelessness and Health’ in Toronto in 1987: ‘I wash their feet, and it’s tragic and wrong that they have to have sore, injured, frostbitten and infected feet. No-one in our rich society should have to suffer such indignity and injustice’. In all her years of working among homeless people in Toronto, where the problem had steadily increased, Cathy called for homelessness to be declared a National Disaster on the same scale as floods and earthquakes. Her friends call Cathy a national treasure, a mixture of love and tenacity, in the league of international humanitarian leaders.

Cathy is determined to end the plight of homelessness in Canada. She exhibits a profound respect for the homeless men and women who struggle daily to survive. She is a major player in the ‘1% Solution’ campaign, which makes the point that in the mid-1990s, federal, provincial, territorial and municipal governments spent about one percent of their budgets on housing. Since then, governments have made substantial cuts. The 1% Solution calls on governments to double their commitments to housing programmes by restoring and renewing housing spending.

Mpho Sebanyoni-Motlhasedi gives her nationality on her CV as ‘African’. One of her friends said of her, ‘if you want to make South Africa a better country, learn from people like her’. While she has become associated with one particular hospice, she has inspired people in the whole of Africa and the international arena.

Mpho became a nurse in 1983. Her room mate during her training days remembers that it was only Mpho who cared for a patient on a surgical ward who had maggots. None of the others nurses were willing to care for him. The patient offered Mpho a goat for her troubles, but he died before he could fulfil his promise. Mpho was content that she had managed to maintain his quality of life.

Another person said of Mpho that she is ‘an outstandingly dedicated person who leads by example, works taxingly long hours seven days a week and who confronts head-on (and heart-on) the bitter realities of AIDS and its impact on individuals, families and children’. She had given up her salaried job to address the HIV/AIDS problem in the community. She established the Moretele Sunrise Hospice, which is the hub of care and counselling, skills development, training for caregivers in 80 villages, support groups for grannies, volunteers in the district, 15 satellites in rural communities, and even a medicinal garden. As well as this, Mpho is now studying for a degree in oncology.

Citations for Human Rights and Nursing Awards 2001

Karla Schefter was born in East Prussia, Germany and trained as a nurse between 1960 and 1963. She specialised in surgical nursing and was involved in many projects setiing up new surgical services and training staff to run them. Since 1989 she has worked with the German Afghanistan Committee. The Chak-e-Wardak Hospital opened its doors in the same year and now has 40 beds. It is the only hopsital in the province serving more than 400,000 in habitants. Karla works there for nine months every year.

Her special interest lies in helping Afghan women. To meet this goal, Karla built a vocational training centre for Afghan women within the hospital compound, which now stands as one of the very institutions in Afghanistan where women have a chance of being trained in health related professions and work to earn their families' living.

It is owing to her dedication and consistency tha the project survived extremely difficult times, and has grown despite this. The hospital is not only an institution caring for the physical needs of patients.

Amidst an environment of war, destruction and despair, it is a sign of hope for a better tomorrow in a country, which, in many aspects and to may people, represents an almost hopeless case of never-ending hate and violence. Karla Schefter is making it possible for the hospital to exist.

Christine Schmitz was born in Germany and trained as a nurse between 1981 and 1984. After her first experience abroad with a German non-governmental organisation (NGO), she joined the international medical NGO Medecins Sans Frontierers (MSF).

Her focus was mainly in acute crisis areas. Her list of missions with MSF reads like a roll-call of the wards during the last decade: Turkey and Iraq in 1991, Somalia in 1992, Croatia and Liberia in 1993, South Sudan in 1994, Dagestan/Chechnya and Bosnia in 1995, Iran in 1996, Sierra Leone in 1997, Albana in 1999, East Timor, Philippines and Uganda in 2000, and South Sudan this year. Her most striking experience has been the mission in the Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica. Together with an Australian doctor she witnessed the enclave's brutal taking by the Bosnian-Serbian army in July 1995. The deportation of women and children and the killing of thousands of men remain in her memory. Her resolve was strenghtened by this and she continues to assist others, both at home and abroad.

Glenda Wildschut grew up in a South African society that was socially engineered to make it impossible for her to succeed. Despite this, she gathered academic and clinical nursing and public health qualifications at home and in the USA. Recently she presented the first course in health and human rights at the University of Cape Town's Faculty of Nursing. She has been a Commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission since its inception, worked at WHO headquarters in Geneva, and been part of an African National Congress negotiations team to facilitate the integration of military health personnel in the National Defence Force.

Her special interests are violence, trauma and torture rehabilitation. She has helped to develop a reparation policy for genocide survivors in Rwanda, a reconciliation process in Guinea Bissau, and a church response to the proposed truth commisssion in Sierra Leone. She has shared her experience with Countries from Indonesia to Italy, Palestine and the Vatican.

Last year she became the Director of the Desmond Tutu Leadership Academy, dedicated to research and development training for leaders, especially women, in fields from politics to business. Her colleagues credit her with 'street-skills' - the wisdom born out of the battles against apartheid - but also with a 'listener's heart' that gives her a love of committment to humanity.

For photographs of the three 2001 award winners and more information about human rights, see the special edition of Nursing Ethics on Human Rights, Vol.8 No.3 (May 2001).