2024 Outstanding Peace Activist

Professor Mr. Federico Mayor Zaragoza has been a pioneer for peace activism on the global scale. He was the former head of UNESCO from 1987 until 1999. He was Minister of Education and Science from 1981 to 1982.

Under Kofi Anan’s tenure as Secretary-General of the United Nations, Professor Mayor served as the co-president for the UN High Level Group for the Alliance of Civilizations (AoC). This alliance aimed to end extremism by increasing intercultural and religious cooperation and communication. He led the mission to “build a bastion of peace in the minds of all people”. He carried forward this mission into his future positions in the Inter Press Services(IPS), Co-President for the UN High Level Group for the Alliance of Civilizations (AoC) and President of the International Commission against the Death Penalty.

He has been awarded multiple honorary doctorate degrees, the Madre Terra by the ONES Mediterránia Awards and by the Governing Council of the Junta de Andalucía in 2008.

“What we have to do is to get involved, to make possible a future in which the social gap disappears, in which the word is used instead of the power.”