The 2024 Letelier-Moffit Human Rights Awards were given to Rabbis for Ceasefire and the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU), and the Concejo de Autoridades de 48 Cantones de Totonicapán of Guatemala; and a slain former awardee was honored.
The following article was published in the November-December 2024 issue of NewsNotes.
The Institute for Policy Studies held their annual Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Awards ceremony in Washington, DC, on October 10. Each year, IPS honors both a domestic and international awardee.
This year’s domestic awardees are the Institute for Middle East Understanding, for their work “providing journalists with quick, reliable access to information about Palestinians by Palestinians,” and Rabbis for Ceasefire, “an ad-hoc group of Rabbis across denominations, organizing towards a ceasefire in Gaza and a just peace in Israel-Palestine.”
The international awardee is the 48 Cantones, ancestral community authorities of 48 groups of Maya K’iché’ people defending democracy and increasing access to opportunities for Indigenous peoples in Guatemala.
In addition to honoring this year’s awardees, the ceremony included a tribute to Honduran environmental defender Juan Lopez, a 2019 Letelier-Moffitt awardee who was murdered in Honduras on September 14. (See accompanying article in this issue of NewsNotes.)
IPS established the Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Awards in 1976 to honor their fallen colleagues, Orlando Letelier and Ronni Karpen Moffitt, who were assassinated that year in Washington, DC, by the US-backed regime of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet for their work to defend democracy and human rights in Chile. Today, IPS says, “these awards celebrate new champions of human rights and memorialize the victims of the Pinochet dictatorship.”
The Maryknoll Sisters received the award in 1981, and Maryknoll Sister Pat Ryan received the award on behalf of Derechos Humanos y Medio Ambiente (DHUMA) in Puno, Peru in 2018.
The 2024 international award was presented via video by Guatemalan-American U.S. Congresswoman Delia Ramirez of Illinois. Referring to the popular struggles leading to and surrounding the 2023 presidential elections in Guatemala, Rep. Ramirez said, “The powerful movement catalyzed by the 48 Canones is an example of how peaceful protest, community decision-making, rooted in Indigenous traditions, and coalition-building between Guatemala’s historically excluded populations was the force that stopped the attempts to silence the democratic will of the Guatemalan people.”
Orlando Castro, one of three members of the 48 Cantones receiving the award on their behalf, noted that the 48 Cantones had been joined by a number of other Maya K’iche and other Indigenous groups. He also thanked migrants who have had to leave Guatemala in search of economic opportunities. “They have also lifted up their voices to say, ‘Enough of so much corruption!’ They also supported us.” He concluded, “The path of ancestral community service is the path by which we can all find one another, sustain one another, and help one another. May everyone rise up, and nobody be left behind.”
Phyllis Bennis and Khury Petersen-Smith of IPS presented the domestic awards. Petersen-Smith commented on the “overwhelming” violence on and since October 7, 2023, but also noted a profound breakthrough in awareness and mobilization on the issues of Palestinian rights in the United States, attributing this to both Jewish groups pushing back on the use of Jewish identity to justify violence, and Palestinian groups telling their own stories. Bennis recounted how IMEU has worked with Palestinians in the Middle East and the United States and with the U.S. press to amplify stories of Palestinians, and of how Rabbis for Ceasefire quickly emerged in the face of the war in Gaza, to become a prominent mobilizing force bringing Jewish demands for peace to the attention of political leaders.
Dana Kardoush of IMEU expressed gratitude at receiving the award alongside Rabbis for Ceasefire, saying, “So many people think and want to believe that there is a conflict between Palestinians and Jews, when we know how untrue it is. The dividing line is between people who support and promote ethnic or racial supremacy and those who believe in freedom for all people with no exceptions.”
Faced with a failure thus far to end the war in Gaza, Rabbis for Ceasefire founder Rabbi Alissa Wise called on people of faith to return to sacred scripture for ethical direction, saying, “The way (we) are choosing to engage with Jewish tradition is to mine it for imperatives to solidarity and mutual aid; to nourishing where we live, not dominating it; to live interdependently with our neighbors; to choose collective liberation. We will keep at it as long as it takes.”
Faith in action
Write to your members of Congress urging a ceasefire and for an end to U.S. weapons transfers to Israel. https://mogc.info/ceasefirenow
Photo of Orlando Castro of the 48 Cantones receives the 2024 International Letelier-Moffit Award by Dan Moriarty.