Desmond Tutu Reconciliation Fellowship Award

Desmond Tutu Reconciliation Fellowship Award

Global Reconciliation has announced the call for nominations for the Desmond Tutu Reconciliation Fellowship.

The Fellowship is the premier award in the world recognising effective achievements in reconciliation.

This year, the theme of the Fellowship is Gender and Reconciliation.

The award carries with it an AUD $10,000 prize.

Gender relations and reconciliation.

Gender relations are fundamental to all human experience. Across human history gendered identity has rested on the biological significance of sexual reproduction between male and female.

However, its social implications and the ways in which gender is lived go far beyond such ‘biological grounding’.

Gender is a fundamental basis of potential difference for productive and meaningful relationships between people, but it has also been a basis for the erasure of difference through the exercise of power, the limitation of freedoms and possibilities, and the force of violence.

Over many years, the relationships between men and women have been subjected to critical scrutiny. More recently, the very concept of ‘gender’ is facing deep challenges.

While the nature of the questions asked, and the conclusions reached, have varied greatly in relation to different cultural, religious and ethnic frames, the process of questioning itself has been a global phenomenon.

In many cases, profoundly progressive changes have resulted, while in others the result has been increased inequality, oppression, violence, and insecurity.

Reconciliation across the boundaries of difference

Global Reconciliation understands reconciliation as the promotion of creative communication and practical dialogue across the boundaries of difference, in order both to preserve and protect difference and to be able to draw on it as a source for rich new meanings.

In terms of gender relations, this reconciliation process includes coming to terms with the complex relations they have to their own gendered bodies and to those of others.

Award process

The award of the Fellowship is made following a review process that considers past accomplishments and possible future achievements.

A panel will consider the nominations received and submit a recommendation to the Global Reconciliation Board, which will make the final decision.

Past winners have included Zeremariam Fre, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Nanko Van Buuren, Ian Campbell, Elizabeth Langslow, Katarina Pejovic, June Oscar, and Emmanuel Jal.

Successful candidates may hold the status of Fellow for life and use the initials FGR after their names in public recognition of their Fellowship of Global Reconciliation.

An award of AUD $10,000 will be made with the Fellowship, to be invested in the furthering of the Fellow’s work.

Eligibility Criteria