US Secretary of state Hillary Clinton has announced Ms. Jansila Majeed of Puttalam as one of the ten winners of this year’s International Women of Courage (IWOC) award. The US Embassy in Colombo has released a statement in this regard.

On March 10, Secretary Clinton will present the awards to the honorees at the Department of State. The annual International Women of Courage Award was started in March 2007 to recognize women around the globe who have shown exceptional courage and leadership in advocating for women’s rights and advancement. This is the only award within the Department of State that pays tribute to outstanding women leaders worldwide. It recognizes the courage and leadership shown as they struggle for social justice and human rights.

“These ten women have overcome personal adversity, threats, arrest, and assault to dedicate themselves to activism for human rights,” said Melanne Verveer, the State Department’s first ever Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues. “From striving to give more voice to politically underrepresented women in Afghanistan to documenting human rights abuses in Zimbabwe, these heroic individuals have made it their life’s work to increase freedom and equality in the world.”

Full text of the Statement released by the US Embassy is as follows:

The United States Embassy is pleased to announce that Ms. Jansila Majeed has been selected by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to be one of ten recipients worldwide of the Department of State’s International Women of Courage award.

Ms. Majeed is the Managing Trustee of Community Trust Fund in Puttalam province.  The Trust oversees a number of programs on minority and women’s issues, including women’s rights, peace building, relief work, working with young people, and mine-risk education in the North and East.  Ms. Majeeb’s own particular focus is on uniting the Muslim and Tamil communities in her province.

Having lived as an internally displaced person (IDP) for almost 20 years, Ms. Majeed has become an energetic activist for services for displaced Muslim and Tamil civilians, focusing particularly on grassroots programs on life skills, health, and women’s empowerment.  Her activism began in 1992 with a working group of five people.  She overcame both the general neglect of the problem of IDPs in the Muslim minority as well as her own community’s parameters for women activists to build a broad-based organization that effectively works on minority and women’s issues in a highly sensitive and politicized environment. 

The annual International Women of Courage Award was started in March 2007 to recognize women around the globe who have shown exceptional courage and leadership in advocating for women’s rights and advancement. This is the only award within the Department of State that pays tribute to outstanding women leaders worldwide. It recognizes the courage and leadership shown as they struggle for social justice and human rights.

The other awardees this year are: Shukria Asil (Afghanistan), Col. Shafiqa Quraishi (Afghanistan), Androula Henriques (Cyprus), Sonia Pierre (Dominican Republic), Shadi Sadr (Iran), Ann Njogu (Kenya), Dr. Lee Ae-ran (Republic of Korea), Sister Marie Claude Naddaf (Syria), and Jestina Mukoko (Zimbabwe).