"The award symbolizes the heroic and often untold stories of women who are leading the ways to peace in countries affected by war and age-old conflict." - UN Secretary General Kofi Annan
Peace Prize Sculptures:
Flora Brovina with Tim Holmes and his sculpture, "Anima Mundi", the inaugural U.N. Millennium Peace Prize for Women. Brovina was imprisoned by the Serb military for aiding Kosavar refugees.
Helen Hakena accepts the U.N. Millennium Peace Prize for Women in a ceremony at the U.N. on March 8, 2001, International Women's Day.
A woman in traditional dress from Rwanda admires "Anima Mundi", the U.N. Millennium Peace Prize for Women created by Tim Holmes.
U. N. Peace Prize for Women - Anima Mundi
Tim was commissioned in 2000 to create an award envisioned specifically to address the fact that the Nobel Peace Prize had only gone to 10 women in 110 years.
United Nations commissions sculptor to create international peace prize
NEW YORK, NY– Contemporary art and the struggle for peace have always gone hand in hand. Now the United Nations has commissioned a work by U.S. sculptor Tim Holmes to commemorate the efforts of women around the world to bring peace to war-torn countries.
The purpose of the award, officially called the Uited Nations Millennium Peace Prize for Women, according to UNIFEM executive director Noeleen Heyzer, is “to identify the unsung heroines who have risked social standing, and in some cases their lives, to initiate peaceful resolutions to long-standing bloodshed.”
The prize, Heyzer said, is inspired by hundreds of stories about the often unrecognized and valiant efforts that women are making to bring peace to war-affected countries. Women in Somalia, South Africa, Liberia, Guatemala, Colombia, Kosovo, Cambodia and many other countries have set inspiring examples of building peace across clans, political affiliations and ethnicity.
Sculptor Holmes was chosen for the commission because of his lifelong commitment to peace organizations, and his worldwide renown for creating art works to be given as awards to peace makers. Holmes, who lives and works in Helena, Montana, has exhibited in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia, in St. John’s Cathedral in New York, and in a number of museums and galleries across the U.S. Because his sculpture so often unites the spirit of artistic expression with the work of peacemakers and spiritual leaders, Holmes has attracted a number of devoted collectors including museums and institutions, as well as a community of private art lovers.
The U.N. Peace Prize for Women to date has been given to:
Father Elias Chacour, Palestinian Peacemaker
Elias Chacour's farming family was forced out of their farm along with the rest of his village by the army of the new nation of Israel in 1948, when he was 8. He was even hired at one point by the occupants of his farm to come and work the orchard with his trees for their profit.
He could have developed a deep, life-long hatred for the invaders but instead he has spent his life trying to bring the Palestinians and Israelis together in peace. He has created a school system for students of all faiths to study and live together. Mar Elias Educational Institutions consist of a kindergarten, elementary, junior high, and high school and a recently established university, located in Ibillin, an Arab village in northern Israel.
During the recent Israel/Hezbollah War, at one point the Hezbollah announced they were going to rocket a northern Israeli town. Fr. Chacour and many of his students took a bus to the town so that if it was bombed by his own people, they would be in as much danger as the Israelis being targeted. As a result, the missles never came. This is the kind of inspirational courage that appears only rarely in human affairs!