Human Rights and Nursing Awards

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 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 midwife. 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).