Prisen for minerydning i verden. Foto: Nils Lund Pedersen
The Kennedy Society of Denmark has decided to present John F. Kennedy’s book
“Profiles in Courage” as an award to the deminers in the world.
Laudatio: This courageous work translates the words of President John F. Kennedy in 1961 to join ”a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself.” And Senator Robert F. Kennedy’s words about the impotence of military means, when he criticized them in the war in Vietnam in his book ”To seek a newer world”, 1967: ”Still even though we must know as a nation what is necessary to do, we must also feel as men the anguish of what we are doing…. Guns and bombs cannot fill empty stomachs or educate children, cannot build homes or heal the sick. But these are the ends for which men establish and obey governments; they will not give their allegiance only to governments that meet these needs.”
Landmines – also those similar to them in cluster bombs – are either killing innocent children, women and men or maiming them to indescribable suffering. Landmines don’t promote democracy and freedom, but do everything to lose the war against terror.
Many people, organizations and nations have committed themselves to eliminating landmines: Jody Williams in the 1990s as a leader of ”The international Campaign to Ban Landmines,” - the late Princess Diana - and the Special Counsel to President John F. Kennedy, Theodore C. Sorensen, in his appeal to his government in 2003 in Washington: ”… to accept those treaties, which we have rejected, including those on global warming, land mines, biodiversity and human rights,” - Dr. William Kennedy Smith in ”Physicans Against Landmines” with his call: ”US must back ban on land mines,” -Canada has as a nation been leading in ”The Ottawa Treaty from March 1, 1999” against landmines - and the efforts from The United Nations have been according to the words in its Charter ”to save succeeding generations from the sourge of war,” in their efforts to win the peace.
We appreciate humanitarian demining and support the appeal from DanChurchAid to the Danish government to adhere to humanitarian policies and participate in the Norwegian initiative to start a process on a treaty to ban cluster munition.
As a society - founded in Denmark - the award is presented
to the deminers of the world by DanChurchAid.