On Wednesday, November 12, 2008 the IRC held its 75th Anniversary Freedom Award dinner and presented its Freedom Award to Kofi Annan, former United Nations Secretary General and President of the Global Humanitarian Forum.
Previous recipients of the Freedom Award, now in its 51st year, include Winston Churchill (1958), Burmese Nobel laureate Daw Aung Suu Kyi (1995), Vaclav Havel (2003) and Nelson Mandela (2004). The presentation was made by IRC board co-chairs Alan Batkin and Jonathan Wiesner and IRC’s president, George Rupp.
"Over the last 75 years, this organization has saved and changed the lives of millions of people," Annan said in his acceptance remarks. "It has evolved and grown to become a savior of refugees."
Annan said that economic and environmental causes are now the main reasons people are forced to flee their homes and communities. "The number of people displaced because of climate change is expected to shortly become the largest body of migrants of any category," he said.
More than 800 guests attended the event at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, which capped a yearlong celebration of the IRC's 75th anniversary. IRC director of special events Ann Marie Duross says the $2.7 million raised by the dinner was a record and that dinner-related contributions are still coming in.
Amanya Michael Ebye, the IRC's Middle East regional director, welcomed IRC supporters to the dinner and shared his own story of growing up in Uganda under Idi Amin's reign of terror during which his family was forced to flee their home. "Because of what my family and I had gone through, I think it was natural for me to choose a career in the field of humanitarian aid," Ebye said.
IRC president, George Rupp paid tribute to four IRC colleagues and aid workers who were killed in Afghanistan in August. After asking the audience to join in a moment of silence, Rupp announced that the IRC will continue to work in Afghanistan.
As he has since 1998, Tom Brokaw again served as the dinner’s master of ceremonies and spoke movingly of the IRC’s work. He told the story of Salaymatu Bah, a refugee from Sierra Leone who was resettled by the IRC in Boston. Thanks to the IRC’s efforts, she was reunited last year with her two missing sons. Ms. Bah and her sons then joined Brokaw on stage, where she expressed her gratitude to the IRC.
Alaa Naji, a refugee from Iraq who is an IRC caseworker in Atlanta, brought the evening to a moving conclusion with her account of how she and her children fled Iraq and made their way to the U.S. last May after her husband was killed by terrorists and she became a target because of her job as a U.S. Army translator.
"I am proud and grateful that I work for the IRC," Naji said "For the first time in many years my family and I can really taste our human rights. And we only do so because of your humanity- you who understand the challenges of restoring dignity, respect and relief to all who need it —and right now the Iraqi people really need it."
75th Anniversary Freedom Award Dinner Supporters
