Another cap on Binalakshmi Nepram
Source: The Sangai Express

Imphal, October 04 2018: Reach All Women in WAR (RAW in WAR) will honour Binalakshmi Nepram, a human rights defender and author from Manipur and Svetlana Alexievich, a writer and investigative journalist from Belarus, with the 2018 Anna Politkovskaya Award for their bravery in speaking out and in defying injustice, violence and extremism in the context of forgotten armed conflict in their regions, for which they have even suffered death threats.

The RAW in WAR Nominations Committee for the 2018 Anna Politkovskaya Award lauded the quiet but effective acts of bravery undertaken by Binalakshmi Nepram and Svetlana Alexievich to raise and support the voices of women from conflict zones in their regions.

Binalakshmi Nepram co-founded India's first civil society organisation to work on disarmament and to oppose growing militarisation, the Control Arms Foundation of India (CAFI).

In 2007, she launched the Manipur Women Gun Survivors Network, which has helped more than 20,000 women survivors of gun violence in the 70-year-long armed conflict in Manipur to rebuild their lives and obtain justice.

Svetlana Alexievich who, in 2015, received the Nobel Prize in Literature, has been, for many years, bravely speaking out about injustices in the post-Soviet space and giving voice to those trapped in conflict, past and present.

She has repeatedly criticised the Russian annexation of Crimea and the human rights violations in the conflict in Eastern Ukraine, as well as the growing Nationalism and the oligarchy in Ukraine, which brought threats against her from both Russian and Ukrainian Nationalists.

The awards will be presented to the winners in March 2019 in London at RAW in WAR's 'Refusing to be Silenced' event as a part of the 2019 Women of the World (WOW) Festival at the London's Southbank Centre.

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