Scribe, social activist, 9 others win Saahas Awards

Editor of a newspaper Shillong Times, Patricia Mukhim, was conferred with the Saahas Srestha Award for her contribution to peace building in Northeast India at the award ceremony of Women in Security, Conflict Management and Peace (WISCOMP) on Monday at the India International Centre.

The Saahas Awards are an initiative of the Foundation for Universal Responsibility started by spiritual guru Dalai Lama in 2016.

“The challenges persist because we don’t know the steps towards conflict transformation. We jump to resolution,” Patricia said after receiving the award.

The WISCOMP Saahas Awards 2024 recognise and celebrate the work of those who demonstrated resilience and initiative to build a vocabulary of peace and non-violence in the South Asian Region . “The awards are inclusive in nature and open for women, men and LGBTQIA+ from diverse socio-economic and cultural backgrounds, faith persuasions and the differently abled.” their official release said.

50 applications were received out of which 11 were selected from India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. The jury included former Ambassador Shyam Saram, former Ambassador Gautam Mukhopadhaya, former Chief Justice of Jammu and Kashmir High Court Gita Mittal, Professor Krishna Menon, Poonam Muttreja and Susan Ferguson.

Among other awards, the Saahas Shakti Award was conferred on Laxmi Chetri (Assam), Lailuma (Kabul), Deepa Pawar (Mumbai), Sheuli Sharma (Cox Bazar, Bangladesh).

Chetri has been working for the past two decades to address gender-based domestic violence and sexual abuse in the conflict-affected Bodoland Territorial Region (BTR) of Assam with a focus on Chirang district.

Deepa in 2015 founded the Anubhuti Charitable Trust to support the upliftment of Nomadic Tribes – Denotified Tribes (NT-DNT) communities focusing on areas such as mental health, leadership training, career development and sexual and reproductive rights.

The Saahas Chetna Award was conferred on Omar Hafiz from Anantnag who after completing his Master’s degree in Computer Science spent six months doing research on suicide rates in South Kashmir districts along with another organisation. His study revealed that 70 per cent of the reported suicides were committed by women.

Later in 2017, Omar founded STEARS, an initative that creates a safe and inclusive space for young girls and individuals from the third gender community, bringing storytelling to the forefront. Chetna Award was also conferred on Conflict Victim Women National Network Nepal for their work in psycho-social support for female victims of conflict in Nepal.