The Ambassador of Conscience Award is Amnesty International

Amnesty International

Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...

's most prestigious human rights

Human rights

Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...

 award. It is given annually to individuals who show exceptional leadership in the fight to protect and promote human rights and human conscience

Conscience

Conscience is an aptitude, faculty, intuition or judgment of the intellect that distinguishes right from wrong. Moral judgement may derive from values or norms...

. 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

Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney is an Irish poet, writer and lecturer. He lives in Dublin. Heaney has received the Nobel Prize in Literature , the Golden Wreath of Poetry , T. S. Eliot Prize and two Whitbread prizes...

 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

Recipients

• 2009 - Aung San Suu Kyi
  Aung San Suu Kyi
  Aung San Suu Kyi, AC is a Burmese opposition politician and the General Secretary of the National League for Democracy. In the 1990 general election, her National League for Democracy party won 59% of the national votes and 81% of the seats in Parliament. She had, however, already been detained...
  
  , leader of the Burmese National League for Democracy
  National League for Democracy
  The National League for Democracy is a Burmese political party founded on 27 September 1988. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi serves as its General Secretary. The party won a substantial parliamentary majority in the 1990 Burmese general election. However, the ruling military junta...
  
  

• 2008 - Peter Gabriel
  Peter Gabriel
  Peter Brian Gabriel is an English singer, musician, and songwriter who rose to fame as the lead vocalist and flautist of the progressive rock group Genesis. After leaving Genesis, Gabriel went on to a successful solo career...
  
  , musician and humanitarian activist

• 2007 - not awarded

• 2006 - Nelson Mandela
  Nelson Mandela
  Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, and was the first South African president to be elected in a fully representative democratic election. Before his presidency, Mandela was an anti-apartheid activist, and the leader of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing...
  
  , former President of South Africa
  President of South Africa
  The President of the Republic of South Africa is the head of state and head of government under South Africa's Constitution. From 1961 to 1994, the head of state was called the State President....
  
  

• 2005 - Irish rock band U2
  U2
  U2 are an Irish rock band from Dublin. Formed in 1976, the group consists of Bono , The Edge , Adam Clayton , and Larry Mullen, Jr. . U2's early sound was rooted in post-punk but eventually grew to incorporate influences from many genres of popular music...
  
   and their manager Paul McGuinness
  Paul McGuinness
  Paul McGuinness is the main shareholder and founder of Principle Management Limited: an artist management company based in Dublin, Ireland, which has managed U2 from the start of their successful career...
  
  

• 2004 - Mary Robinson
  Mary Robinson
  Mary Therese Winifred Robinson served as the seventh, and first female, President of Ireland from 1990 to 1997, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, from 1997 to 2002. She first rose to prominence as an academic, barrister, campaigner and member of the Irish Senate...
  
  , former President of Ireland
  President of Ireland
  The President of Ireland is the head of state of Ireland. The President is usually directly elected by the people for seven years, and can be elected for a maximum of two terms. The presidency is largely a ceremonial office, but the President does exercise certain limited powers with absolute...
  
   and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
  Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
  The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights is a United Nations agency that works to promote and protect the human rights that are guaranteed under international law and stipulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948...
  
  

- Hilda Morales Trujillo

Hilda Morales Trujillo

Hilda Morales Trujillo is a lawyer in Guatemala who has become internationally known for her work in defending women's rights and as a campaigner for Guatemala's Network for Non-Violence Against Women. In 2004 she shared the Amnesty International Ambassador of Conscience Award with Mary Robinson.-...

, Guatemala

Guatemala

Guatemala is a country in Central America bordered by Mexico to the north and west, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Belize to the northeast, the Caribbean to the east, and Honduras and El Salvador to the southeast...

n women's rights

Women's rights

Women's rights are entitlements and freedoms claimed for women and girls of all ages in many societies.In some places these rights are institutionalized or supported by law, local custom, and behaviour, whereas in others they may be ignored or suppressed...

 activist

• 2003 - Václav Havel
  Václav Havel
  Václav Havel is a Czech playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and politician. He was the tenth and last President of Czechoslovakia and the first President of the Czech Republic . He has written over twenty plays and numerous non-fiction works, translated internationally...
  
  , former President of the Czech Republic