Ambassador of Conscience Award

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Ambassador of Conscience Award is Amnesty International's most prestigious human rights award. It is given annually to individuals who show exceptional leadership in the fight to protect and promote human rights. The Award aims to promote the work of Amnesty International by association with the life, work and example of its ‘Ambassadors’.

Art for Amnesty, Amnesty International's global artist liaison project, organizes the annual Award Ceremonies drawing on the generosity and inspiration of Artists and the Arts.

Art for Amnesty brings together artists of all disciplines and friends of Amnesty International to support the Organization's work.

The inspiration for the award comes from a poem written for Amnesty International by Irish Nobel prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney called "The Republic of Conscience."

From the Republic of Conscience

I

When I landed in the republic of conscience

it was so noiseless when the engines stopped

I could hear a curlew high above the runway

At immigration, the clerk was an old man

who produced a wallet from his homespun coat

and showed me a photograph of my grandfather

The woman in customs asked me to declare

the words of our traditional cures and charms

to heal dumbness and avert the evil eye

No porters. No interpreter. No taxi.

You carried your own burden and very soon

your symptoms of creeping privilege disappeared

II

Fog is a dreaded omen there, but lightning

spells universal good and parents hang

swaddled infants in trees during thunder storms

Salt is their precious mineral. And seashells

are held to the ear during births and funerals.

The base of all inks and pigments is seawater

Their sacred symbol is a stylized boat

The sail is an ear, the mast a sloping pen,

The hull a mouth-shape, the keel an open eye.

At their inauguration, public leaders

must swear to uphold unwritten law and weep

to atone for their presumption to hold office

and to affirm their faith that all life sprang

from salt in tears which the sky-god wept

after he dreamt his solitude was endless

III

I came back from that frugal republic

with my two arms the one length, the customs woman

having insisted my allowance was myself

The old man rose and gazed into my face

and said that was official recognition

that I was now a dual citizen

He therefore desired me when I got home

to consider myself a representative

and to speak on their behalf in my own tongue

Their embassies, he said, were everywhere

but operated independently

and no ambassador would ever be relieved