Hillary Clinton Honored with 2013 Tom Lantos Human Rights Prize

Hillary Clinton is the first woman and first American to be awarded this prize.  Congratulations, Mme. Secretary!  Madeleine Albright, Annette Lantos, and President of the foundation, Katrina Lantos Swett were among those honoring her today.

 

C-SPAN  Library has the video.

Hillary Clinton Receives Lantos Award

Former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton receives the annual Lantos Award for defending human rights for women & promoting internet freedom. The Foundation was founded in honor of Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA), the first Holocaust survivor to serve in Congress.

Event Segments:

• Lantos Foundation Award Ceremony for Hillary Clinton
   
  
• Lantos Foundation Honors Fmr Sec. of State Clinton - Hillary Clinton Remarks

Hillary Clinton: 2013 Lantos Institute Laureate

Readers may remember that while she was in Budapest, Hungary in June 2011,  Hillary Clinton participated in the inauguration of the Lantos Institute there.   The foundation named for the late Congressman and presided over by his daughter, Katrina Lantos Swett, has announced that Hillary will receive the Lantos Human Rights Prize on December 6 in Washington, D.C.

Our best compliments, Mme. Secretary, on this well-deserved honor!

US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton gives a speech during the inauguration ceremony for the Tom Lantos Institute in the Upper Chamber Hall of the parliament building in Budapest, on June 30, 2011. Late US congressman Tom Lantos (in Picture frame) was a Hungarian-born human rights activist and Holocaust survivor. AFP PHOTO / ATTILA KISBENEDEK (Photo credit should read ATTILA KISBENEDEK/AFP/Getty Images)

Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton To Be Named 2013 Lantos Prize Laureate

November 7, 2013, WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice today announced that it will award the 2013 Lantos Human Rights Prize, its highest honor, to Hillary Rodham Clinton. The Former Secretary of State will receive the award for her tireless efforts to promote human rights for women around the world and her groundbreaking work on promoting human rights through Internet freedom.  Former recipients of the Lantos Prize include the Dalai Lama, Elie Wiesel, Paul Rusesabagina and Chen Guangcheng. The award ceremony will take in Washington, DC on December 6, 2013. It will be open to press and coverage is invited. 

“Hillary Rodham Clinton has gained global recognition for her leadership in so many critical arenas, but we are particularly proud to recognize the enormous contributions she has made to human rights causes,” said Katrina Lantos Swett, President of the Lantos Foundation. “Her proclamation that ‘women’s rights are human rights’ changed the way the world thinks about human rights and opened doors for women in a way that only Hillary Clinton could. Furthermore, Secretary Clinton’s  pioneering work on Internet Freedom has  focused worldwide attention on the urgent need to “tear down the walls” of closed societies that seek to imprison their citizens behind internet firewalls that have become the iron curtains of this “virtual” century, She has also provided a powerful intellectual framework for advancing this central human right of our time.”

In nearly four decades of public service, Hillary Rodham Clinton has served as an advocate, attorney, First Lady, United States Senator and most recently as Secretary of State of the United States. Though she has championed a number of issues ranging from education to health care, Secretary Clinton is revered in the human rights community for her 1995 Beijing speech where she boldly stood up for women’s rights and became a true global champion for those issues. She also broke new ground in 2010 when she declared that governments that fail to allow for Internet freedoms are not only attempting to crush dissent, but to deny human rights.

The Lantos Foundation established the Lantos Human Rights Prize in 2009 to honor and bring attention to heroes of the human rights movement. It is awarded annually to an individual or organization that best exemplifies the Foundation’s mission, namely to be a vital voice standing up for the values of decency, dignity, freedom, and justice in every corner of the world. The prize also serves to commemorate the late Congressman Tom Lantos, the only Holocaust survivor ever elected to the U.S. Congress and a prominent advocate for human rights during his nearly three decades as a U.S. Representative. Former recipients of the Lantos Prize include His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, Rwandan humanitarian Paul Rusesabagina, and Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng.

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