Alternative Nobel Peace Prize in 2006,
to the International Poetry Festival of Medellín
The Foundation Right Livelihood Award with its headquarters in Stockholm has officially announced today, September 28, 2006, that a jury formed by ten international personalities has decided to grant the 2006 Alternative Nobel Peace Prize to the International Poetry Festival of Medellín, "in recognition of its courage and hope in times of despair", among 73 candidates of 40 nations, activists for truth, peace and social justice.
The jury has based its decision to concede this year's world peace price to the International Poetry Festival of Medellín "for asserting and expressing the human values of beauty, creativity, freedom of expression and community work, in opposition to the fear and violence that prevail in Colombia and in the world today."
The Alternative Nobel Peace Prize will be given to the director and representatives of the International Poetry Festival of Medellin, on the 8th of December in a ceremony that will take place in the Swedish parliament.
In regard to this, the organizers of the International Poetry Festival of Medellín wish to express our genuine pride and happiness for the granting of the Alternative Nobel Peace Prize to our organization, constituting intrinsically a great recognition of the brave Colombian young people that passionately love life and poetry, and that have year after year filled the venues of the Festival with the fervent desire to contribute to the creation
of a new life and the realization of the immemorial dream of poetry, liberty and social justice, and it is also a reward, above all, for the lengthy
struggle of the Colombian people for a just and negotiate peace to put an
end to our bloody and costly war of 40 years.
The function of art in general and of poetry in particular has not been or
is to solve the fundamental problems of men and women. Its function is to
remind us, from an ever new perspective, the existence of these problems.
And our potential to solve them. Poetry and art are there to widen our
conscience, and to spur it on an emancipating direction.
The 2006 Alternative Nobel Peace Prize is recognition of the historic role
of poetry and the spirit, in opposition to the culture of death that has its
source in the authoritarian spheres of the national and transnational
powers. The 2006 Alternative Nobel Peace Prize also constitutes an embrace
for the people's fighters and martyrs of the political massacre of
Colombia's society, actually a militarized and paramilitarized society where
the human, social, economic and cultural rights are violated on a daily
basis.
The International Poetry Festival of Medellín summons the poets and
creative artists of our time to join the peoples of the world in a shared
struggle for a pure earth and a new humanity, without destructive wars or
social injustice, as an expression of the immemorial yearning of the human
species.
Fernando Rendón, Director
Festival Internacional de Poesía de Medellín
Corporation of Art and Poetry Prometeo:
Address: Transversal 39 A No 72-52, Medellin, Colombia, South America.