Peace award ‘will help safeguard Afghan activist’

ONE of the most under-threat women in the world yesterday said receiving the Tipperary International Peace Award would help her personal safety.

Dr Sima Samar, chairwoman of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, was presented with the award at the Ballykisteen Hotel in Limerick Junction at a ceremony attended by leading public figures and members of the diplomatic corps.

She said the award represented recognition by the international community and this recognition would help her own personal security in Afghanistan.

Dr Samar is under constant threat from conservative religious leaders and Islamic radicals for her constant campaigning for the rights of women and girls in her country. She has had to flee Afghanistan on a number of occasions, but has always returned.

Earlier this year, one of her colleagues in the commission, her husband and four children were killed by a suicide bomber in a supermarket in Kabul.

After qualifying as a medical doctor, Dr Samar dedicated her career as a doctor to caring for women and girls, much to the anger of the authorities.

Her work to further civil rights for women in Afghanistan has earned Dr Samar accolades worldwide and last year she was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize for peace.

Speaking at the award ceremony, Dr Samar said: “I am honoured and it is a great pleasure to receive this award... When I am recognised by the international community outside of Afghanistan, it serves to give me protection from being targeted by fundamentalists. I have bodyguards and when I go from my house to my office, I have 24-hour bodyguards. I cannot walk in the street or go to every public event.”

In a message to Dr Samar, President Mary McAleese said: “This is a high honour and reflects the courage, generosity of spirit and great humanity that Dr Samar has demonstrated during her untiring fight for the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

Former winners of the award include Nelson Mandela, Bob Geldof, Bill Clinton, Benazir Bhutto and Edward Kennedy.

Meanwhile, presidential hopeful Senator David Norris said he was prepared for the “kitchen heat” of the campaign when questioned by reporters about the controversy over an interview with Helen Lucy Burke.

“I am very good at withstanding the heat, I have been there before. But I didn’t realise there was a celebrity chef thing and I was going to have filthy language, plates, knives, crockery thrown at me and tantrums all over the place.

“But I’ll get over that too and people will see there will be all kinds of nonsense going around and that this is another part of it. There is a lot of this stuff coming out and it’s all either misquoted, wrong or misunderstood.”