For many developing countries around the world, universal health coverage (UHC) remains an elusive dream. Poor people living in the countryside are often the most affected, with little or no access to the most basic health services.

For Thailand—now an upper middle-income economy—this is no longer true. UHC was finally implemented in 2002, and it has since been hailed as a system that offers largely free medical care to Thai citizens.

But UHC and other landmark achievements in Thai healthcare did not happen overnight. Rather, they were the result of decades of struggle waged by progressive, visionary, and dedicated Thai physicians in both professional and political arenas to secure adequate and affordable healthcare for their people, especially the rural poor.

Those doctors bonded together in what has since been called the RURAL DOCTORS MOVEMENT (RDM)—a combination of the Rural Doctor Society (RDS) and the Rural Doctor Foundation (RDF). While many doctors belong to both, the RDS is an informal and more flexible organization, and the RDF is a formal NGO comprising doctors working in public hospitals.

The emergence of the RDM reflects the changes and the needs in Thai society, particularly since the 1960s when, as in other developing countries, many Thai medical professionals left for greener pastures in the United States. The resulting brain drain forced the government in 1967 to impose compulsory service for medical professionals in the rural areas in return for their subsidized education. This exposed them to the harsh realities of life in the countryside, making them acutely aware of the need for corrective policies.

At the same time, in the early 1970s, a pro-democracy movement swept Thailand, advocating for greater freedom and socio-economic justice. Many idealistic young doctors joined this movement, seeing in it an opportunity to redress the inequities they saw in Thai society. They organized medical teams for the student protesters, and in 1974, students were sent to the countryside to study poverty and inadequate healthcare.

Their experience and awakening are best expressed by former president of RDS, Vichai Chokevivat, who recalls that “When I was a rural doctor, I saw many people taken ill and becoming almost penniless. They had to sell their farmland or even their daughter to get enough money to pay for their medical treatment. It was such a painful and bitter experience that we dreamt of providing free medical care to the sick.”

In 1978, following the brutal suppression of the student movement, many medical students sought refuge in rural areas, strengthening their ties to their host communities. To be able to continue to operate under the new regime, the Rural Doctor Federation became the RDS. Later still, in 1982, many of the same doctors behind the RDS organized and registered RDF as a formal umbrella for their programs.

Some prominent RDS leaders—among them Chokevivat, Choochai Supawongse, Kriengsak Vacharanukulkieti, Supat Hasuwannakit, and the late Sanguan Nitayarumphong—had activist backgrounds, and the RDS continued to fight for greater civil liberties and against corruption in the 1990s. However, it never lost sight of its main goals: to support medical and public health services in rural areas, disseminate medical and public health information, and boost the morale and spirit of rural doctors.

Through their influence in health governance, RDS doctors continue to advocate for policy reforms. Through the more formal RDF, progressive healthcare programs are implemented more effectively utilizing official channels. The RDF also networks with other NGOs such as those for nurses and pharmacists as well as the World Health Organization and other international agencies.

The impact of the movement on Thai society is clear, palpable, and enduring. Thailand’s rural doctors have demonstrated how vital adequate and affordable healthcare is to social justice, how necessary democracy is in creating the best environment for positive social change, and how the spirit of volunteerism can achieve superlative results.

In electing the RURAL DOCTORS MOVEMENT to receive the 2024 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes their historic and continuing contribution to their people’s health—and perhaps just as importantly, to their recognition and fulfillment as citizens with basic rights. By championing the rural poor, the movement made sure to leave no one behind as the nation marches forward to greater economic prosperity and modernization.

As far as we know, in the 66 years history, the Ramon Magsaysay Award have always been given to individuals or organizations. It is our great honor to be the first movement to receive this recognition.

The Thai Rural Doctors Movement emerged alongside the Democracy Movement of students and citizens in the mid-1960s. During that period, Thailand faced a severe shortage of doctors in rural areas, exacerbated by the brain drain to the United States. Thus, the Ministry of Public Health had to implement a compulsory policy for medical students to work in rural areas for three years after graduation.

This policy made newly graduated doctors face hardships in the rural hospitals. They have begun to unite their efforts to support each other and to provide better healthcare for rural people in the scarcity of resources and disparity in the country. The “Rural Doctor Federation” was established in 1976 for these reasons and re-named as the “Rural Doctor Society” in 1978. Three years later, the “Rural Doctor Foundation” was founded to be the official organization of our movement. This is the beginning of our movement to reform Thailand’s healthcare system.

After the victory of students and citizens in the democracy movement in October 1973 against the military government, we saw the opportunity to improve our society and we pushed one of the articles into the constitution that emphasized the importance of public health, mandating that “the state provide free healthcare to the poor and requiring the state to offer free services for the control and prevention of dangerous communicable diseases.” This provision has remained in every subsequent Thai constitution, despite several coups de’tat.

This provision and the development of the health infrastructure were the crucial foundations that enabled us to establish the Universal Health Coverage system successfully in 2002.

Though the accessibility to health facilities has been improved, we still saw many patients hesitated to get the treatment because they have no money to pay out of pocket. Some of the patients when they have a serious health condition, they ask the doctor to send them back home even though they should be transferred to get better medical treatment. So, the universal health coverage program was our holy grail as it will bring people to the equity of healthcare.

To achieve this, we did the research, set the agenda, and communicated the suffering of sick people to society. We campaigned and created policy advocacy strategies. And when there was the election in 2001. The window of opportunity was opened for us, and the Thai-Rak-Thai party got interested in this policy and put it into their campaign. After the Thai-Rak-Thai government was formed. The universal health coverage policy was implemented.

But the task of our movement was not yet finished. We continue working hard to decrease the resistance, improve the benefit packages, cooperate with health professionals, raise their spirit to work in the underserved areas, and most importantly, be the watchdog for corruption.

Recently, when COVID-19 struck Bangkok, we set up “the Rural Doctors Rescue Bangkok operation” to screen and give treatment in the capital. Our mobilization of rural doctors has helped many urban poor through that hard period.

Our spirit of contributing to the equity of society aligns with the ideology of the late President Ramon Magsaysay, who believed that “those who have less in life should have more in law.”

Ladies and Gentlemen, Working for the people to reduce inequality is a never-ending mission. Receiving the Ramon Magsaysay Award confirms that the Thai Rural Doctors Movement are on the right path and serves as a significant encouragement for us to continue forward. We believe that universal health coverage is crucial, and we would like to see every country make a strong effort to achieve universal health coverage in the near future.

Thank you very much.

In a world torn and threatened by wars, the work of advancing and sustaining peace is an urgent imperative. It is also extremely difficult. The issues are complex and often intractable. But through time, conscientious peace-makers have forged and collected the vital tools of conflict resolution and peacebuilding.

Women, in their gendered roles of settling disputes, healing, and nurturing, have risen to the task in many conflict-ridden communities. However, they have typically been left out of the decision-making processes that are crucial in ending wars and transforming the polity.

This is changing, albeit slowly. An exemplar in this shift is Miriam Coronel-Ferrer of the Philippines. Her impassioned engagement in political issues started in the late 1970s, when, as a student activist, she joined the resistance against martial rule. After the 1986 People Power Revolution that toppled the Marcos dictatorship, Coronel-Ferrer felt the need to find peaceful resolutions to the many armed conflicts that continued to divide the country.

With other women peacebuilders, Coronel-Ferrer initiated the drafting of the Philippines’ first National Action Plan on Women, Peace, and Security. The draft was eventually adopted by the government in 2010 as part of its commitment to the UN Security Council Resolution 1325. The landmark document urges all member states to ensure the protection of women’s rights during armed conflicts, mainstream the gender perspective in peace keeping and peace building, and advance the role of women as peacebuilders at all levels.

In the same year, she joined the government panel tasked to negotiate with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), subsequently becoming its chief negotiator in the latter part of 2012. In this role, she was consistently focused and determined, humble but tenacious, and empathetic and open to the position of others. Soon, she earned admiration and respect for her analytical command of the issues and skill as a negotiator.

In 2014, the Philippine government and MILF signed the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB), ushering the transition process that created the new Bangsamoro entity with a more empowered autonomous government. As crucially, the agreement also provided a process for the decommissioning of weapons and combatants and the transformation of conflict-affected areas into peaceful civilian communities.

The CAB has been described by international observers as a model for the integration of gender-responsive provisions and the inclusive participation of women and civil society organizations. Coronel-Ferrer sees this achievement more modestly: “There is no perfect agreement, but we make it more imperfect by leaving women out of the process.”

Coronel-Ferrer’s long-standing peace advocacy has gone beyond the country’s borders. She has since been invited to be part of international teams looking into the conflict situations in East Timor and Cambodia. She had provided support work for the peace programs of the Carter Center in its work on Sudan and Syria. In 2018, she became a member of the United Nations Standby Team of Senior Mediation Advisers, the only one from Southeast Asia so far. In her three years with the UN, she was deployed to support the mediation and preventive diplomacy work of UN missions in places like Afghanistan, Kosovo, Iraq, the Maldives, and the ASEAN region.

In 2020, Coronel-Ferrer co-founded the Southeast Asian Women Peace Mediators, a pioneering group of women engaged in convening safe spaces for dialogues and supporting mediation initiatives in countries like Myanmar and Afghanistan. Today, this is her main work. In addition, she also sits as member of the board of trustees or advisory bodies of several key conflict resolution initiatives such as the International Crisis Group, the Global Network of Women Peacebuilders, the Harvard University-based Negotiations Strategies Institute, and the Peace Treaty Initiative.

“Conflicts,” she wisely observes, “are best resolved not through the annihilation of one party, but by the mutual transformation of all players towards a common vision and shared responsibilities and accountability.”

In electing Miriam Coronel-Ferrer to receive the 2023 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes her deep, unwavering belief in the transformative power of non-violent strategies in peace building, her cool intelligence and courage in surmounting difficulties to convey the truth that it is through inclusion rather than division that peace can be won and sustained, and her unstinting devotion to the agenda of harnessing the power of women in creating a just and peaceful world.

It has been 35 days since the outbreak of the most horrendous war yet of the 21st century running its course before our eyes in Israel and Palestine.

Over 20 months of bombardments have passed since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

The year before that, the coup of Feb 2021 in Myanmar.

And long before these crises, in many parts of the world, occupiers lording it over other people, regimes using violence against their own.

More than 10,500 people have been killed in Gaza, 1,400 in Israel,—almost half, children. Hundreds of thousands have been forcibly displaced… In the West Bank, the killings are alarmingly spiking up.

In Ukraine, the death toll has reached 9,614 civilians with twice that number injured over the course of 19 months.

Since Myanmar plunged in a civil war with many fronts, an average of 130 civilians have reportedly been killed by junta airstrikes, shelling, gunfire, etc.

I thank the Ramon Magsaysay Foundation for giving me this platform to raise my voice of concern. To draw attention to the desperate need for us to wake up, and to push to find lasting solutions to these nightmares.

To affirm that, might is not right.

The Ramon Magsaysay Awards and its Transforming Leadership program, with its motto on the greatness of spirit, however, is not a platform of gloom. On the contrary, it is a platform to spread the message of hope….

Hope. A beautiful four-letter word pregnant with life’s meaning.

Hope that we find in the stories of efforts that have paved ways out of large-scale, longstanding political violence.

Through stories such as our Bangsamoro peace process. Not a perfect process nor agreement. A very slow one – 17 years of talks and by now 9.5 years of unfinished implementation.

Still, an example that bidding for peace through political negotiations can still produce comprehensive peace agreements, a scarcity nowadays.

An example that, through collaborative action and committed partnerships, a peace agreement can be sustained, and the governance infrastructure for meaningful autonomy, a reordering of the relationship between the national state and the substate created, not only to give life to the principles of the right to self-determination but also to engender more democratic, responsive, participatory politics within and among the Bangsamoro.

Of course, we know that this process will take time. It has to prevail over both conservative and extremist mindsets. It must consequently remove the guns from politics and everyday life. Most important, it has to tame the unruly behavior of the political class, and eventually produce transformative leadership in the next batches of leaders to come.

I thank the Ramon Magsaysay Foundation, its Board of Trustees (past and present), partners, and all those awardees who came before the four of us here because they are what this Foundation is all about.

I thank you for this encouragement to promote the stories of courageous women and men who never tired in building peace, every day, everywhere, for every person, one step at a time through peace and human rights education, mediation, humanitarian work, campaigns, and so on, in every imaginable and yet to be imagined ways. A good representation of them are here with us by the way, my fellow peace advocates.

I offer this recognition to them who keep the faith, the faith that it does happen that history, history will be written by the victors, where the victors are those from all sides who did not forsake our humanity but defended it.

Most important, I offer this to the many women in their communities, often ignored, often sidelined, but now empowered to believe in their own strength and capabilities, in no small way by being part of an evergrowing movement, a sisterhood of peacebuilders, mediators, negotiators, conflict preventers, and transformers.

I said it before and will say it again, sisterhood rocks.

It rocks for peace and justice.

Maraming salamat po.

Healthcare is broadly social and deeply personal, particularly with respect to a costly, high-mortality disease like cancer. Cancer can be emotionally and financially devastating for patients and their families, especially the poor. The problem is compounded in places like the North Eastern Region (NER) in India, a remote, “forgotten,” predominantly rural and agricultural border region where access to medical care is difficult. Even in the region’s leading state Assam, where cancer incidence is high amid a population of 35 million, the first cancer hospital was not opened until 1981. Later, a second, the Cachar Cancer Hospital and Research Centre (CCHRC) was established in 1996, it was the initiative of a non-profit society of local citizens, funded by public philanthropy on land provided by government.

CCHRC would, however, expand into an innovative, widely admired, full-service cancer care facility after Indian surgical oncologist Dr. Ravi Kannan R. became hospital director in 2007, the first formally-trained oncologist to fill the position. It surprised many that Kannan, who previously headed the surgical oncology department in Adyar Cancer Institute, a major cancer institute in Chennai, would exchange a position in a big city for a small hospital in a remote part of the country. Kannan had a simple answer. It was where he was most needed.

Under Kannan’s leadership, CCHRC became a full-fledged comprehensive cancer hospital and research center. From a hospital with limited facilities when he came on board, it now has twenty-eight departments covering oncology, pathology, radiology, microbiology, epidemiology, tumour registry and palliative care, and other services and specializations. From a staff of only twenty-three, the hospital now employs 451 people.

Kannan saw from the beginning that it was not just a matter of having state-of-the-art cancer facilities. Patient compliance rate to treatment was at 28%. Patients came but did not continue their treatment due to such reasons as the difficulties of traveling long distances, the cost (including the loss of income of family caregivers), and resignation to the belief that the patient would never be cured. Clearly, the underlying reason was poverty. Thus, the hospital introduced such pro-poor initiatives as free treatment, food and lodging, adhoc employment for caregivers, and a homecare program. Hospital team members would travel long distances to train family members in pain management and palliative care, as well as provide free medicines. As a result, patient compliance rates rose to 70%. CCHRC now provides free or subsidized cancer care treatments to an average of 5,000 new patients annually, catering to approximately 20,000 poor patients for treatments and follow-ups. Kannan says, “No one should be denied access to treatment due to want of money.”

The hospital states its vision in these words: “We aim to become a state-of-the-art cancer center that will ensure that no individual develops a cancer that can be prevented, that no patient is denied appropriate cancer treatment for want of resources, that no patient dies in agony and indignity and that no family suffers treatment induced poverty and grief.” It is a clear, bold statement that the hospital translates into actual practice.

Kannan, now fifty-nine-years-old, has served the hospital for nearly seventeen years. He is particularly proud of the people around him who share his vision for the hospital, many of them young professionals attracted and inspired by his leadership. Self-sacrificing and quietly heroic, Kannan lives with his family in Assam and in this remote region continues to work without expectation of public recognition. Reiterating his mission, he says, “To be able to deliver inclusive health care and inclusive cancer care, you must have care available. You must have care that is equitable, accessible, and affordable.”

In electing Ravi Kannan R. to receive the 2023 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes his devotion to his profession’s highest ideals of public service, his combination of skill, commitment, and compassion in pushing the boundaries of people-centered, pro-poor health care and cancer care, and for having built, without expectation of reward, a beacon of hope for millions in the Indian state of Assam, thus setting a shining example for all.

I bring greetings and warm wishes from India.

This recognition rightfully belongs to many, many people.

This belongs to the Cachar Cancer Hospital Society who dared to dream of such a facility over thirty years ago.

This belongs to all my 450 colleagues in Cachar Cancer Hospital and Research Centre who have passionately believed in our cause and have tirelessly labored in seeing our shared dream of inclusive healthcare and cancer care become a reality for the people that we serve.

This belongs to our local communities including to our government officials and representatives who have reposed their trust in the process of creating Cachar Cancer Hospital and Research Centre in our little pocket of land in the state of Assam.

This belongs to the countless individuals and organizations across our great country of India and all across the world who have shown their steadfast commitment and support in the humble work that we do.

Most importantly, this belongs to the people we have treated, the individuals and their families, who have entrusted their lives in our hands without any reservations.

What we do in Silchar is not unique. There are several others who are engaged in similar work in healthcare and other fields who strive to improve the lot of our fellow men and women on this planet.

I believe that the Ramon Magsaysay Award recognizes all of our collaborative spirits and efforts.  I accept this Award on behalf of all of them.

As Bhupen Hazarika, an Assamese bard sang, “‘We’re in the same boat brother. If you tip one end, you gonna rock the other, it’s the same boat brother.'” All lives on this earth are so intimately linked to one another that we cannot afford to be exclusive.

An ancient Sanskrit verse goes thus: Ayam nijam paro veti ganana laghu chetasam, Udar charitanam tu vasudhaiv kutumbakam.  For the wise, the entire earth is one family.

The road to human happiness and fulfillment truly lies in holding every life on this planet sacred and worthy of our love in an all-inclusive spirit. People have given us their time, talents, and treasures not merely to help the sick regain their health but to give much-needed hope to the hopeless. Together, all of us can change the way we take care of sickness and suffering, promote universal health, and control of cancer and other diseases.

Om Sarve Bhavantu Sukhinah, Sarve Santu Nir-Aamayaah | Sarve Bhadraanni Pashyantu, Maa Kashcid-Duhkha-Bhaag-Bhavet | Om Shaantih Shaantih Shaantih ||

May everyone be happy, be free from all disease, see goodness and auspiciousness in all things, and may none be distressed. May everyone be at peace.

Let us each continue to make efforts both big and small to harness the goodness around us to better the conditions of everyone in need with faith that together, we can make a difference.

Thank you to the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for this great encouragement that indeed together we can all make a difference.

Stories of otherwise ordinary individuals who, moved by the spirit of pure generosity, can transform the lives of so many, make us feel good and hopeful about the world.

This is the story of fifty-eight-year-old Japanese ophthalmologist TADASHI HATTORI.  Born in Osaka in 1964, he graduated from Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine in 1993 and then went to work in hospitals in Japan. Asked why he wanted to be a doctor, he said that he had resolved to become one when he was fifteen, after seeing his cancer-stricken father so rudely treated when he was admitted to the hospital. He wanted to become a doctor sensitive to the feelings of patients and their families. In 2002, he visited Hanoi for the first time at the invitation of a Vietnamese doctor and found that in a country where cataract blindness was prevalent, there was a dire lack of eye specialists and up-to-date treatment facilities, such that it was common for people in rural areas to go blind because they did not have access to needed care or could not afford the cost. He was deeply moved. And what started out as a visit became a life mission. When he returned to Japan, he used his savings to buy medical equipment to donate and went back to Hanoi. This set him off on a life of shuttling between Japan and Vietnam almost every month, spending a total of 180 days in Vietnam—giving free eye treatments; training Vietnamese doctors; donating equipment and supplies to hospitals—and then the rest of the year in Japan, working in hospitals to raise an income for his family and mission.

Explaining his passion to help, he says: “Whether people can see or not decisively affects their lives. Even just healing one eye may make it possible for someone to attend a school or go back to work. It can give relief to family members who have been looking after an affected person. I can’t turn my back on people who are on the verge of losing their sight just because they lack the money to pay for treatment. My starting point as a doctor is to help people.” Perhaps remembering his father, Hattori says, “A doctor should have not only the skills but also the heart. That’s why my motto is, ‘Treat your patients as your parents’.”

To date, HATTORI and his team of Vietnamese doctors have treated more than 20,000 patients. Driven, HATTORI would perform forty to fifty cataract operations or six to eight vitrectomies per day. He has trained more than thirty Vietnamese doctors who can now perform sophisticated eye operations, and he has donated or facilitated the donation of medical equipment to local hospitals. Cognizant that the need is greatest in the rural areas, he has led medical missions with a team of Vietnamese doctors, giving free treatments and performing surgeries for thousands of people.

To support and upscale his work, HATTORI founded the Asia-Pacific Prevention of Blindness Association (APBA) in 2005, with him as executive director, to enlist participation in training doctors, helping hospitals, and conducting free treatment and surgeries. In 2014, with investors and medical colleagues, he founded the Japan International Eye Hospital in Hanoi, one at par with Japan’s top ophthalmic hospitals, to serve paying patients as a way of building a sustainable fund for free outreach programs.

HATTORI is a highly skilled practitioner, currently regarded as one of Japan’s leading surgeons in vitrectomy and phaco surgery. Even if he is called “the man with the golden hands” because of his expertise as a surgeon, he insists that it is still the heart that matters most. Hattori is the epitome of a professional that has demonstrated the highest form of individual social responsibility.

In electing TADASHI HATTORI to receive the 2022 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes his simple humanity and extraordinary generosity as a person and a professional; his skill and compassion in restoring the gift of sight to tens of thousands of people not his own; and the inspiration he has given, by his shining example, that one person can make a difference in helping kindness flourish in the world.

I stand here today, honoured and humbled to be conferred the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award, the greatest honour.

I am by no means an elite doctor. I kept failing entrance exams. It took me four years to be accepted at a medical school, and seven more years to graduate. But the reason why I did not give up is because of a promise I made to myself when I was seventeen years old. That was when I overheard the medical staff speaking disrespectfully to my father who was fighting his last fight against cancer. I said to myself then that I will become a doctor who can empathize with the feelings of patients. That conviction stayed has stayed with me since.

I parted with what comfortable life I had in Japan for a new challenge in Vietnam twenty years ago because of that same conviction. There was a shocking prevalence of cataract blindness in the country.  What was more shocking was that patients typically would come to the hospital only when they are in a dire situation…when they have lost sight in both eyes.

I once met a six-year-old boy whose one eye was already light negative, the other with retinal detachment. He needed eye surgery urgently. But on the day of the surgery, he did not show up.  He could not afford the surgery.  How was this six-year-old going to live the rest of his life? Wasn’t there anything that I could have done? I have not been able to forgive myself since then for having let the boy go. That was when I decided that when patients cannot pay, I will simply tell them, “No worries, it will be alright. I will pay for you from my own pocket money, and so please have the surgery.”

Most of you may never have been conscious that you can see. Now, may I ask all of you here, to close both your eyes just for a moment?  How would you feel if you have to live in that darkness for the rest of your life, and that you will have to depend on your family to assist you all your life?  How would you feel, if you were that six-year-old boy?

Please open your eyes now.

It scares me too, to think of life without light.  But that is precisely the situation millions of people still find themselves in today.

When a child cannot read or write, unable to go to school because of blindness, it means the child is deprived of the opportunity to explore the full potential of life that God has given.  There are adults who cannot see, and live every day feeling helpless, useless and hopeless simply because they do not see the light ahead in life.  If there is anything that I can do as an ophthalmologist, it is to bring light to such people, so that they will turn their despair to hope and live a better life that they deserve to live.

As I said, I am in no way an elite doctor. I am just filled with joy when patients smile when they see light again. I find happiness in working with the doctors that I trained, and in providing free treatments for people across the region in Asia.

My wish is to be where there is a need, where there are people who want to see light, because I know that regaining vision is not only about being able to see, but about discovering hope in life.

Let there be light. God bless you all.

The rise of digital media carried with it the promise of democratization in the ways in which knowledge is produced, distributed, and consumed, and the ways in which the people themselves can directly and actively participate in media’s making. Digital media is not an unmixed blessing, as shown in today’s extreme fragmentation in the field, the distressing realities of digitally-aided manipulation, “false news,” and censorship. Still, it remains full of possibilities for widening democratic space.

In Indonesia, there is excitement and hope in the media venture called WATCHDOC MEDIA MANDIRI or WATCHDOC (from “watchdog” + “documentary”), that combines the tools of investigative journalism, documentary filmmaking, and digital technology. WATCHDOC’s advocacy is to create public awareness of such issues as human rights, social justice, and the environment. The private audiovisual production company was incorporated in 2011 by two remarkable individuals, Dandhy Laksono and Andhy Panca Kurniawan, both with journalism backgrounds and a passion for social causes. Disenchanted with mainstream broadcast TV—the concentration of media ownership, the premium on ratings, advertising, and revenues, the merchandising of entertainment and news—Laksono and Kurniawan yearned for an independent, people-based, and socially responsible media.

Strongly embedded in civil society, WATCHDOC draws its material and themes from issues of public concern that have not been treated adequately in mainstream media or presented from a people’s perspective. With a lean permanent staff of fifteen, WATCHDOC sees itself as a movement and not just a content creator. To work independently and reach the greatest number of people, it taps non-traditional and emerging platforms and is not fixated on just a single distribution strategy. Using its   independently-produced advocacy films, WATCHDOC builds a robust audience through offline distribution, social media, and other alternative channels including partnerships with non-government organizations to screen films in remote, indigenous communities. WATCHDOC also cultivates logistical and funding support through collaborations and cross-subsidies with similarly-minded groups and institutions.

In less than a decade of existence, through its two YouTube channels and other platforms, WATCHDOC has produced and distributed over 150 film titles that average two hundred thousand viewers per video. Eight of its documentaries have each attracted more than one million views. One of them, called Sexy Killers, a documentary on the coal mining industry’s links with Indonesia’s political establishment, is a viral hit, getting thirty six million views as of July 2021.

The group’s adventurous spirit is exemplified by a major project in 2015 called Expedisi Indonesia Biru (Blue Indonesia Expedition), in which Laksono and co-filmmaker Suparta Arz went on a motorbike journey across Indonesia for a year, studying and recording what was happening to ordinary citizens like farmers, fishermen, and indigenous peoples. The journey eventually resulted in a twelve-part documentary film series, exposing such problems as the impact on the environment of the palm oil industry, the fight of locals against the construction of a cement factory in Central Java, and other issues that received a lot of attention from government and the public.

A great part of WATCHDOC’s influence is the credibility it enjoys because of its reputation for journalistic integrity; they have refused bribes or partnerships with known violators of human rights and environmental laws. It sticks to basics, doing strongly-researched, fact-based, quality work. It builds a constituency by staying close to its audience, holding pre-screenings and group discussions with non-government organizations and local communities. WATCHDOC is a young organization and knows societies are not changed overnight. As Laksono says, “We realize the goal is still very far away. Even though the macro-policy has not changed, if these small things become a movement, gradually it will be strong.”

In electing WATCHDOC MEDIA MANDIRI to receive the 2021 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership, the board of trustees recognizes its highly principled crusade for an independent media organization, its energetic use of investigative journalism, documentary filmmaking, and digital technology in its effort to transform Indonesia’s media landscape, and its commitment to a vision of the people themselves as makers of media and shapers of their own world.

Represented by Watchdoc Founder, Andhy Panca Kurniawan

First of all, on behalf of my colleagues from WATCHDOC MEDIA MANDIRI, let me express my deepest gratitude for this Award, appreciation, and recognition. It is like a new social contract between WATCHDOC and the broader community across state borders.

For your information, WATCHDOC is a production house that has released more than 400 documentaries and 1,000 television features. This includes various films such as “Sexy Killers”, “The EndGame”, “Kinipan”, “The Mahuzes”, “Asimetris”, and hundreds of other works that are mostly accessible online. We at WATCHDOC also manage an inclusive video production training unit for all.

To be recognized and acknowledged as a Ramon Magsaysay Awardee for Emergent Leadership is a great honor and a great pleasure for us.  We are motivated and our spirits are boosted to make more documentary films and to promote human rights louder and clearer through them.

Twelve years ago, we pioneered the production house WATCHDOC.  Ten years ago, we formalized it into a private production house.  We imagined it to be an integral part of a social movement―making documentaries as a communication tool for us to learn from each other, to strengthen each other, and to become a platform for the struggles of civil society.

To realize the social movement we imagined, our productions focus on themes concerning public interest and the function of the media in influencing and shaping society.  WATCHDOC combines this with an inclusive distribution strategy easily accessible by a wide audience.  And as the media chooses to form private companies as a method of achieving sustainability, this Award has also become a pivotal moment when we are committing to continue what we have pioneered and started.

This Award is a reminder that we must all increasingly and systematically strive to present realities in society. Because these awards are given to organizations or institutions, not specific individuals or films. We would like to dedicate this Award to all the Watchdoc Communities, those who have been working with us, all our viewers, Asian people and all of you.

Thank you to the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, to our predecessors who have received this Award, and to the peoples of Asia. You are all a source of inspiration and positive energy for the civil society movement today and in the future.

People displaced by war, natural disasters, and extreme privation is one of the great tragedies of our time. It is an urgent challenge governments and international bodies must address; it must be faced as well on the ground with the victims of such displacement.

This is the lifework of one person and the organization he founded. STEVEN MUNCY, a sixty-four-year-old American, was raised in a humble family grounded in the principles of Christian love for others. In 1980, he enlisted in a Baptist journeyman social ministry program that brought him as a volunteer to the Philippine Refugee Processing Center in Morong, Bataan, a transit center for Indochinese refugees of the just-ended Vietnam War. Seeing the dire lack of psychosocial services in the camp, he formed a non-governmental organization (NGO), Community Mental Health Services, to address this need with support from the Norwegian government and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). In 1989-1993, the NGO was also tasked by UNHCR to do similar work in the Vietnamese refugee camps in Hong Kong.

Renamed Community and Family Services International (CFSI) in 1989, it defined itself as a humanitarian organization committed to “the lives, wellbeing and dignity of people uprooted by persecution, armed conflict, disasters, and other exceptionally difficult circumstances.” Based in the Philippines, it would soon serve for varying lengths of time in ten Asian countries, with its longest involvement in the Philippines, Myanmar and Vietnam.

Over the years, CFSI has assisted refugees from forty-eight countries and territories.  In the Philippines, it has provided relief to thousands of families in natural disasters. Today, it is responding to the humanitarian disaster of the Battle of Marawi in 2017. With the Australian government’s support, it is implementing the Marawi Recovery Project, aimed at providing livelihood and other assistance to some 40,000 persons. With the United Nations Children’s Fund, CFSI helped with the transition of some nine hundred former child soldiers, assisting their families to get them back to school and lead peaceful, productive lives. In Myanmar’s Rakhine State, CFSI helped hundreds of thousands by providing literacy and reproductive health training for women and girls and working with communities to build water and sanitation facilities. CFSI also initiated a program that has enabled more than three hundred individuals from the Philippines, Vietnam, Myanmar, and Indonesia to get advanced university degrees in social work.

A major CFSI engagement is its role in the Reconstruction and Development Projects of the Mindanao Trust Fund (MTF), a multi-donor effort administered by World Bank to aid in the socioeconomic recovery of Mindanao, carried out in 2005-2021 in the context of negotiations for a comprehensive peace agreement between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. As project manager, CFSI implemented a large portfolio of sub-projects, ranging from water systems and health centers to alternative education, reaching at least 727,000 beneficiaries in nineteen provinces. Part of its work was capacitating local partners, work critical to a new regional government coming out of a history of conflict. In this engagement, CFSI demonstrated most clearly the links of the various aspects of its mission, from relief and recovery to reconstruction and development, to the building of peace.

From a few workers in 1981, CFSI has a current staff of nearly four hundred in three countries. What it has achieved is the effort of many. Yet, it is also the creation of its founder and leader. STEVEN MUNCY has been on this mission for more than forty years, living outside his own country, working in a difficult environment, with no thought of material rewards for himself. Asked about his career, MUNCY self-effacingly said: “I am so grateful for the opportunities that have allowed me to help a little; grateful for the people who have been involved in this organization; grateful for the blessings I have received from the community.”

In electing STEVEN MUNCY to receive the 2021 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes his unshakable belief in the goodness of man that inspires in others the desire to serve; his life-long dedication to humanitarian work, refugee assistance, and peace building; and his unstinting pursuit of dignity, peace, and harmony for people in exceptionally difficult circumstances in Asia.

Each year, Community and Family Services International (CFSI) formulates a Plan of Action reflecting the theme for the year. The theme for 2021 is “Exceed Expectations.” Being named a Ramon Magsaysay Awardee during this, our 40th Anniversary Year, was a wonderful surprise, far exceeding even our wildest dreams. We still worry someone is going to pinch us and say wake up. Please don’t!

This award is for we, not just me. The rest of the ‘we’ is almost entirely Asian, younger, and far more attractive—which is good news for all! The existence of CFSI is a response to man’s inhumanity to humankind. And I do mean man, as it is rarely women who deliberately bring about such harm to others. Discrimination, violence, and persecution continue to force people to flee their countries, resulting in refugees in various parts of the world, including within Asia and from Asia. In addition, injustice, armed conflict, and disasters lead to lost lives, physical and psychological suffering, and persons displaced within their own countries, sheltering in forests, evacuation centers, transitory facilities, anywhere but where they truly want to be—home.

Most of the people served by CFSI have been forcibly displaced, some repeatedly, within their homelands or across national borders. Some have been denied citizenship, becoming stateless, in the land that has always been their home as well as the home of their ancestors.

While refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) are resilient and have many strengths, let us be clear: forced displacement is harmful and painful. We believe such vicious assaults on the lives, well-being, and dignity of children, women, and men must come to an end, now. Although our roles may differ, we believe it is the responsibility of all to address human suffering wherever it is found, to protect our brothers and sisters from harm, and to promote respect for the universality of human rights. We also believe it is our collective responsibility to invest in disaster risk management and climate change adaptation to prevent forced displacement.

The people of CFSI come from diverse backgrounds, including different races, ethnic groups, religions, sexual orientations, experiences, and stations in life. We are, like you, part of the family that is humanity.

Numbering in the thousands over the past forty years, with most locally recruited, we have a common purpose—rebuilding lives. Specifically, protecting people from further harm; getting children into safe spaces and back into school; enabling crisis-affected communities to access basic services like food, water, shelter, and health care, including vaccinations. Rebuilding lives also means facilitating the resumption of livelihood activities and the development of new skills; the reconstruction of community infrastructure; fostering safe returns home; and promoting social justice. Our approach is needs-based, rights-oriented, empowering, and focused on solutions.

Our work has benefitted millions with operations in ten countries/territories over different periods of time. These include the Philippines, Myanmar, Viet Nam, Hong Kong, Cambodia, Indonesia, Timor-Leste, Thailand, Malaysia, and Papua New Guinea. In addition, outreach efforts to many more countries. Our current top priorities are expanding ongoing humanitarian activity in Myanmar and the Philippines.

The work is challenging and sometimes dangerous, but we are inspired by the resiliency, courage, and efforts of the affected populations. Think about the Vietnamese boat people who, thirty years after resettlement in other parts of the world, raised half a million dollars for Filipinos displaced by Super Typhoon Haiyan. Grateful for help given in their time of need, they gave back without waiting to be asked to help.

Think about Timor-Leste, the new country that emerged from the ashes of violence just two decades ago, now working with its much larger neighbor — Indonesia — to create a shared future for the youth of both countries. Or those in Myanmar helping to protect and assist communities affected by persecution, violence, and the pandemic. Think about the brave souls throughout Asia, both near and far, who have stood up — are standing up — for the rights, wellbeing, and dignity of others, risking their own futures, indeed their very lives. And those working to build a just and lasting peace in war-torn Mindanao, helping children learn that arms are for hugging.

What now for CFSI? We are firmly committed to working in partnership, over the long haul, with a range of stakeholders, especially affected communities and local actors, to provide humanitarian and development assistance, help build peace, prevent disasters, and promote social justice throughout Asia. This includes capacity strengthening efforts, where necessary or advantageous.

We ask for your help to do much more, better. Concretely, to strengthen local capacity, we want to see at least another 500 persons in Southeast Asia obtain a master’s degree in social work and at least ten with a doctoral degree in the same field by the end of 2027. The aim is to ensure highly competent and committed social workers are prepared to help lead humanitarian, development, and peace-building efforts in the future, helping to bring an end to forced displacement. Let us, together, enable more ordinary people to have extraordinary impact.

On a personal level, I would like to express my profound gratitude to the Board of Trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for recognizing my efforts and, more importantly, those of CFSI. In so doing, you have encouraged us and called us higher. I would also like to thank— as well as hug — my family, loved ones, colleagues, friends, and supporters. None of what I have achieved in life would have been possible without you, each playing a unique role that, combined, made all the difference.

In addition to my dear colleagues at CFSI, I would like to thank the Members of our Board of Trustees, both present and past, for your many years of voluntary service, as well as your guidance and support. Lastly, my thanks to our partners — the communities, those who serve with us in the humanitarian and development arenas, and those who provide us with the funds required to carry out our work. Your acceptance and support have been, and remain, crucial. More so as we, encouraged by this Award, move forward, together, in rebuilding lives.

A parting thought. Many have asked what has kept me going in this work for more than 40 years and counting. Quite frankly, I believe every person is a holy place. Meaning, there is something of the Divine in each of us. This, my brothers and sisters, is the basis for my firm conviction that we are indeed members of the same family: humanity.

Vietnam is one of the fastest rising economies in Southeast Asia. As in other newly-emergent economies, social services have sadly not kept pace with impressive economic growth. A social concern that is inadequately addressed involves the rights of persons with disabilities (PWDs). In recent years, government has enacted legislation for PWD protection and support services but the implementation gap remains huge for the estimated 13 million PWDs in the country. In such a situation, the action of citizens is vital, and where civil society is weak, as in Vietnam, the leadership of gifted, dedicated individuals is especially crucial.

VO THI HOANG YEN, born and raised in a remote village in Vietnam’s Dong Nai province, contracted polio when she was two-and-a-half years old. In many other cases, particularly in the rural areas, this condition would have consigned her to a life of dependence. But with a supportive family and her own courage and will, she succeeded in getting an education. Braving discrimination and the constraints of her disability, she earned college degrees at Ho Chi Minh University, and a scholarship brought her to the University of Kansas, where she obtained a master’s degree in human development in 2004. Turning her back on opportunities for a comfortable life in the US, YEN returned to Vietnam.

She had been exposed to the issue and practice of PWD rights in the US, and experienced the stark contrast in Vietnam: the barriers to PWD mobility, access, and employment; the cultural bias that fosters passivity and dependence; the lack of public awareness of PWD needs and rights. Despite her qualifications, her first job application was turned down because of her condition. Undaunted, YEN immediately set to work.

In 2005, with three other PWDs, she founded Disability Research and Capacity Development (DRD), a non-profit organization based in Ho Chi Minh City whose guiding vision was to create “an equal and non-discriminatory society” for PWDs. DRD embarked on public awareness raising activities; livelihood and life-skills training for PWDs; employment and job placement; and diverse other initiatives. Raising funds from international organizations, proactively working with government and the private sector, DRD systematically established its presence as the leading, most innovative PWD advocacy and support group in Vietnam.

Over the past thirteen years, DRD has directly assisted some 15,000 PWDs with skills and capacity building activities, scholarships, job placements, donations of assistive devices and computers, and, using social media, a website on laws for the disabled and a digital map showing PWD-accessible public infrastructure. DRD’s innovativeness was showcased in a pilot “motorbike taxi service,” with a hotline for free transportation for PWDs on specially-designed motorbikes. The project became so popular that DRD could not meet the huge demand. Moreover, DRD has worked with government and the business sector in crafting PWD-related policies and promoting PWD-friendly environments, as in buildings and transportation.

YEN is the quintessential achiever. Confident, hardworking, and articulate, she teaches at Ho Chi Minh Open University and has recently completed her doctorate studies in social work from La Trobe University in Australia, continuing to direct DRD even while doing her studies. It is YEN’s own drive to be able to live independently, and to see this in other PWDs as well, that is at the heart of her advocacy. Autonomy, inclusion, a sense of dignity, releasing and enhancing the capacities of the differently-abled—this is what she is about. Despite the continuing challenges and frustrating resource constraints, YEN remains inspired. She says, “PWDs write or call me, thanking me for helping them change their lives… This is what drives me to continue.”

In electing VO THI HOANG YEN to receive the 2018 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes her dauntless spirit and prodigious energy in rising above her condition; her creative, charismatic leadership in the sustained campaign to break down physical and mental barriers that have marginalized PWDs in Vietnam; and for being a shining, inspirational model for the young in her country and elsewhere in the world.

First of all, I would like to offer a very special thanks to the Board of Trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for selecting me. I have never expected to be here tonight to receive this noble award and to join past recipients who I have long admired and respected. I could not believe it when I got the news! And at that wonderful moment, I thought of my late mother and her unconditional love and sacrifice for my education. I learned from her the value of gratefulness, empathy and sharing.

I also like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the support of the Ford Foundation office in Vietnam for the IFP scholarship and their confidence in me, giving me the very first grants, helped change my life. I am also truly grateful to the support of my colleagues and volunteers at DRD as they are very much a part of my success.

Without them I cannot be who I am today.

For me, it is a great honor to accept this award on behalf of people with disabilities in my home country and other developing countries because I am one of them, who are considered as the poorest of the poor and the most vulnerable of the vulnerable. It is all types of discrimination and the struggle of people with disabilities for a more decent life that have inspired me to do my best to make a change. This good cause transformed me from a helpless person with no future into a determined leader and a change agent with a challenging-but-worthy journey.

This award really reaffirms my belief that everyone is born equal in dignity and worth, and that everyone is entitled—as a human right—to live a life to the fullest extent of his or her abilities. It strengthens my hope that we can have more support and resources to build a better society that addresses the needs and wellbeing of people with disabilities.

We all want to live in a world of love, peace and happiness, but as Mahatma Gandhi said, “You must be the change you want to see in the world.” If we make ourselves better persons, we will change our world.

In few countries is the contrast between great wealth and extreme poverty as stark as in India. Of the latter, a popular image are its street people, dirty, disheveled, and famished, huddled on pavements, in train stations, bus stands, and public shrines. An estimated 400,000 of them are mentally ill, victimized not so much by poverty as by a problem society has not sufficiently understood and addressed: the problem of mental health. Stigmatized and feared, the response of many to these street persons is to pretend they do not exist.

One man chose not to pretend. Psychiatrist BHARAT VATWANI was out dining in a restaurant with his wife Smitha, also a psychiatrist, when they were appalled at the sight of a thin, unkempt man drinking water from a street canal. Taking time to talk to the man, a mentally-afflicted college graduate, they decided to bring him to their clinic to be washed and treated. This show of empathy was not entirely surprising. VATWANI knew what poverty was like. Losing his father when he was only 12 years old forced him and his brothers to take odd jobs, like peddling books door-to-door. Struggling through school as a self-supporting student, VATWANI successfully completed his medical studies in psychiatry at Grant Medical College and at G.S. Medical College & Hospital, both in Mumbai.

After their encounter with the man who drank water from a canal, Dr. VATWANI and his wife started an informal operation of bringing mentally-ill street persons to their private clinic for treatment. This eventually led to the establishment of Shraddha Rehabilitation Foundation in 1988, aimed at rescuing mentally-ill persons living on the streets; providing free shelter, food, and psychiatric treatment; and reuniting them with their families.

Starting with a two-room tenement that could take only three people at a time, Shraddha drew public attention when they rescued and treated a street person who turned out to be a respected lecturer at a Mumbai art school, who had inexplicably disappeared. Learning about what the VATWANIs had done, the school’s faculty and students organized a major art exhibition that drew 141 participating artists in India and abroad, and successfully raised US$22,357. Using this seed money, the VATWANIs bought a piece of property in Mumbai for a 20-bed facility that they opened in 1997; the unexpected donation inspired them to further expand their work with the help of private donors, volunteer professionals, and social workers. In 2006, they moved to a bigger 120-patient facility in Karjat outside Mumbai, which had five buildings on a 6.5-acre land. By then, they had strengthened their three-phase therapeutic program, consisting of the rescue and treatment of mentally-ill street persons, reuniting patients with their families, and promoting awareness of mental health in communities.

Their rescue work has been aided by the police, social workers, and referrals. Shraddha’s free custodial care and treatment ranges from personal hygiene, medical check-ups, psychiatric treatment, to appropriate medication—all done in the open, healing environment of the Karjat facility where patients can engage in simple farm activities and find solace in a multi-religious meditation center. The foundation tracks patients’ families, arranges reunions, and uses such opportunities to spread a supportive and enlightened understanding of mental health among the families and their communities. In a one-of-a-kind mission that began in 1988, VATWANI and the foundation have by now rescued, treated, and reintegrated into their families and communities more than 7,000 of India’s mentally-ill roadside destitute, with a remarkable reunion rate of 95%.

VATWANI’s painstaking, humane undertaking has had to contend with numerous challenges. A deeply spiritual person, the good doctor is often beset by doubts whether he has done enough, given the magnitude of the mental health problem in his country. Notwithstanding these self-doubts, he remains confident in his faith that in the end, “Good work shall continue when there is inherent goodness in the work.”

In electing BHARAT VATWANI to receive the 2018 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes his tremendous courage and healing compassion in embracing India’s mentally-afflicted destitute, and his steadfast and magnanimous dedication to the work of restoring and affirming the human dignity of even the most ostracized in our midst.

From the beginning of Time, the world has always been a conflict between between Right and Wrong, between Truth and Evil, between Justice and Injustice. Ultimately, community leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, Vinoba Bhave, Martin Luther King, The Dalai Lama, Baba & Prakash Amte, irrespective of their particular sphere of activities, support, and are torch bearers of the former. And have ended up becoming emissaries of Truth itself. Often reaching far beyond where the stone thrown into the pond of Life falls, are the implications of the ripples that the stone hitting the water has caused. And the Ramon Magsaysay Award, by recognizing individuals from Asia, has further added to the distance of the ripples created by Asian social Emissaries. It is not individual causes that we as Awardees represent, it is the hope of a collective good, a hope that Truth and God shall prevail within Mankind. And that ultimately we shall join in eternal bonding to the greater Cosmos of a God’s Creation beyond.

Despite this, the cause of the wandering mentally ill roadside destitute which our NGO Shraddha Rehabilitation Foundation espouses, does deserve its place under the sun, as an unspoken tragedy that has befallen mankind. This is because the mental illness causing the destitute to end up on the roads, is not of his/her own making. The wandering mentally ill are shunned, rejected and denied. They brave the chilling winters, the searing summers and the torrential rains for months, years, often decades on end. And continue to be shunned, rejected and denied. To the point of non-existence. And to correct this Injustice, at least in India, was born Shraddha Rehabilitation Foundation.

We had naively thought during its inception, that in the span of our lifetimes, a lot would change for India’s wandering mentally ill. But today, having read a lot of literature on the psyche of social workers, both the famous and the not-so-famous, the heard and the not much written about, I am well aware that the laying down of one lifetime may well be inadequate for a cause. Lincoln had his bouts of deep soul-searching depression. But the cause which he fought for viz racial discrimination has not been sorted out in its entirety, till date. Nobel Laureate Tagore wrote ‘Into that Heaven of Freedom, my Father, let my Country awake..’ 75 years on, his Country is yet to realize his vision. Lincoln and Tagore and those millions of silent strugglers all over the world, who have partaken in ideological wars over innumerable years, have taught us that Change is a Slow Process. However strong and deep rooted be the emotions, however piercing the inner outcry against social disparity or injustice, howsoever passionate the associated intrinsic desire for change, the wheels of the Gods move slowly, albeit very slowly.

And to silently continue on your chosen path, with your nose to the grind, like the faceless, nameless, anonymous soldier carrying the half-hoisted flag of Truth on his shoulder, becomes at some point of time, the wheel of silent revolution in your own silent unwritten destiny. Leading one to understand the Gospel Philosophy of the Sages of Yore that truth is Truth only when it has the capacity to stretch beyond the limits of all endurance, light is Light only when it has the capacity to pierce the darkness. I end this outpouring with a few lines from one of my earliest poems –

If Life,
could be founded on hope,
And Wisdom,
on mere understanding,
Then the horizons would be mine,
The rainbows notwithstanding,
But I had nothing,
Just this pen, paper and a few words,
And my feelings for you,
From the beginning of time….

Manual scavenging is blight on humanity in India. Consigned by structural inequality to the dalits, India’s “untouchables,” manual scavenging is the work of removing by hand human excrement from dry latrines and carrying on the head the baskets of excrement to designated disposal sites. A hereditary occupation, manual scavenging involves 180,000 dalit households cleaning the 790,000 public and private dry latrines across India; 98 percent of scavengers are meagerly paid women and girls. While the Constitution and other laws prohibit dry latrines and the employment of manual scavengers, these have not been strictly enforced since government itself is the biggest violator.

BEZWADA WILSON was born to a dalit family in Kolar Gold Fields township in Karnataka state. Although his family had been engaged in manual scavenging for generations, he was spared the labor to be the first in his family to pursue a higher education. Treated as an outcast in school and acutely aware of his family’s lot, BEZWADA was filled with great anger; but he would later channel this anger to a crusade to eradicate manual scavenging.

He started by changing the mindsets of his family and relatives—that being a dalit is not their fate but a status imposed by how society has been organized, and that no human being should be made to do such demeaning work as scavenging. In 1986, he sent a complaint about dry latrines to the authorities of their town, and when he was ignored sent the complaint to the Prime Minister, threatening legal action. As a result, the town’s dry latrines were converted into water-seal latrines and the scavengers transferred to non-scavenging jobs.

He boldly moved his crusade to other states, working with dalit activists, recruiting volunteers for what would take shape as a people’s movement of manual scavengers and their children, Safai Karmachari Andolan (SKA). With BEZWADA WILSON as national convenor, SKA was launched in 1993 when he initiated the filing of a public interest litigation (PIL) case in India’s Supreme Court, naming all states, union territories, and the government departments of Railways, Defense, Judiciary, and Education as violators of the 1993 Prohibition Act banning dry latrines and the employment of manual scavengers.

SKA vigorously conducted district-level meetings to raise awareness about scavenging, the caste system, and the 1993 Prohibition Act, and trained local leaders and volunteers for the movement. In 2004-2005, it undertook a mass latrine demolition drive across the state of Andhra Pradesh; exposed the occupational violence faced by female scavengers; and met with officials to demand the demolition of dry latrines and the provision of alternative occupations for scavengers. In 2010, SKA led an India-wide march for the total eradication of scavenging, and again in 2015 undertook a 125-day bus journey across 30 states to mobilize the public against manual scavenging. The movement has since made significant progress. In 2013 SKA successfully lobbied for a new law that includes rehabilitation support for scavengers. It lobbied with local authorities for scholarships for children of manual scavengers, and conducted vocational training for scavengers’ daughters to move them into more decent jobs. It is now involved in crafting a new law that provides financial aid for scavengers transitioning to new occupations.

Fifty years old, BEZWADA WILSON has spent 32 years on his crusade, leading not only with a sense of moral outrage but also with remarkable skills in mass organizing, and working within India’s complex legal system. SKA has grown into a network of 7,000 members in 500 districts across the country. Of the estimated 600,000 scavengers in India, SKA has liberated around 300,000. While BEZWADA has placed at the core of his work the dalits’ self-emancipation, he stresses that manual scavenging is not a sectarian problem: “You are addressing all members of society, because no human being should be subjected to this inhuman practice.” Society itself has to be transformed.

In electing BEZWADA WILSON to receive the 2016 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes his moral energy and prodigious skill in leading a grassroots movement to eradicate the degrading servitude of manual scavenging in India, reclaiming for the dalits the human dignity that is their natural birthright.

I am extremely happy and humbled by such an honour that everyone across Asia covets.

I am also here with mixed feelings to receive this award you have bestowed upon me.

I come from a socially discriminated community called Dalits, who have faced the worst form of oppression for generations over many centuries. Sadly, this form of oppression, equivalent to slavery, still continues in modern India, a country aspiring to be a world power.

Furthermore, I represent an even more segregated sections of Dalits who have been forced to do the most menial and extremely dehumanizing occupation in the world, that of manual scavenging—the cleaning and clearing of society’s human excreta manually with bare hands.

I therefore am delighted and grateful that you have chosen a humble son of such a community for this prestigious award. As I think of it, my heart swells with joy and my eyes fill with tears.

But the tears of joy are mixed with tears of grief and regret—that hundreds and thousands of my people have died and are dying in the soak pits. Millions more have succumbed gradually to incurable diseases; their kith and kin live in squalor, with little or no opportunities to improve their lives. I can go on and on to describe our pathetic conditions. But my people have also demonstrated their power of resilience.

This award goes to all the women who burnt their baskets to reject manual scavenging. And I dedicate this award to all those who lost their lives while cleaning the sewer lines. In this moment I remember my team members of Safai Karamchari Andolan spread across all states of India. They worked hard, indeed poured out sweat and blood, awakened an almost resigned community, produced evidence to fight our legal battles, lobbied with legislators, pressured an apathetic administration, demolished dry latrines—symbols of national shame—and, in 2010 and 2015, undertook a tedious bus journey traversing the country.

I also want to thank Dalit movements, women’s movements, social, secular and democratic movements, that have been fellow travelers in our journey. We have been natural allies in fighting casteist, patriarchal, and fascist forces.

I value your award as a fitting and significant recognition that will push forward our struggle in a huge way. It will boost my peoples’ determination to put an end to the obnoxious and inhuman practice. With your recognition, we are sure to gain more friends and supporters from across Asia and rest of the world, whose support is necessary to protect human dignity and human rights of all people similarly discriminated and stigmatized anywhere in the world.

In this connection, I wish to humbly remind you that there are now over 260 million people in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe who fall under the “discriminated” based on work and descent. I wish that the world awakens to their plight and support their just struggles.

I end here with what our great leader Dr. Bhim Rao Ambedkar had said, “Ours is not a fight for wealth or for power. It is the fight for reclamation of human dignity and personhood.” We will march on to annihilate caste.

Let us join hands to tear down the walls that divide humanity on the basis of birth, caste, race and gender and let us restore equality, equity, and freedom of all people.

Jai Bhim! Mabuhay!!

The Philippines is reputed to be one of the countries in the world where government corruption is highest, where large state resources are diverted to private gain and corruption is so “normalized” as to corrupt public morality itself. Since 1950, government has had a series of anti-corruption bodies. Weakly institutionalized, lacking in will, and often corrupted themselves, the record of these bodies has been dismal. The creation of the Office of the Ombudsman (OMB) in 1987 was to be a major step in the anti-corruption campaign, yet again failed to live up to its promise. The justice system is extremely sluggish; cases have mostly involved low-level officials and employees; and public confidence in government’s resolve to root out corruption is practically non-existent. This was the daunting challenge that CONCHITA CARPIO MORALES faced when she was appointed Ombudsman in 2011.

Born to a family of lawyers, she dreamed of becoming a lawyer herself, and pursued the dream in impressive fashion: passing the bar in 1969, working in the Department of Justice, becoming a regional trial court judge, a justice in the Court of Appeals, and finally a Justice of the Supreme Court. Through her long career, she demonstrated the qualities of the quintessentially good public servant: professionalism, competence, integrity, and equanimity in the face of difficult challenges. She set a standard for herself when she said: “The most difficult case to decide is the most fulfilling achievement. However you decide it, you come to a certain point that you think will spell the difference.”

She brought these qualities to her work as Ombudsman. In her strict, scrupulous style, she professionalized and upgraded OMB’s capabilities; revolutionized its anti-corruption program to include the designation of deputy ombudsmen for environmental concerns and for investment-related problems; and improved its responsiveness to calls for public assistance. Setting a target of zero backlog in the investigation or adjudication of cases and disposition of all requests for assistance, the backlog has already decreased and she expects to hit the target by 2018. She raised the independence and quality of OMB’s fact-finding investigations, evidence build-up, prosecution strategies and case management to ensure that meritorious cases are not sabotaged, withdrawn, or dismissed. The results? From 2011 to 2015, the conviction rate of cases handled by OMB before the Sandiganbayan rose from 33.3 percent to 74.5 percent.

She prioritized the filing of cases against high-ranking officials, sending the strong signal that OMB is earnest in its anti-corruption campaign. Under her leadership, OMB has boldly imposed strict administrative sanctions on high officials, filing cases against a former president; a former vice-president; incumbent senators, congressmen, and governors. She is the first Ombudsman to use the waiver in the Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth (required of government officials and employees) as basis to secure bank records in impeaching one of the country’s highest officials.

Recognizing that corruption is not just a matter of persons but systems, she took the initiative in creating an integrity management-based program that mobilizes government agencies and the public and addresses the lack of strategy and direction in the overall anti-corruption campaign. She advocated the passage of legislation to strengthen the OMB’s investigative, disciplinary, asset recovery, and preventive powers. All these are part of her resolve to go beyond political tokenism by establishing the framework of an effective anti-corruption campaign.

Her work is unfinished, and the challenge is not hers alone; but already she has radically improved the efficacy and credibility of OMB, and has shown the way towards a more coherent, concerted action against corruption. Unfazed and quietly determined despite death threats, MORALES, now 75 years old, does not sensationalize her efforts and always works within the law even as she pushes its limits. She is, quite simply, an inspiring public servant.

In electing CONCHITA CARPIO MORALES to receive the 2016 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes her moral courage and commitment to justice in taking head-on one of the most intractable problems in the Philippines; promoting by her example of incorruptibility, diligence, vision and leadership, the highest ethical standards in public service.

I would like to extend my profound thanks to the Foundation for this honor.

Please allow me to break tradition by reading a letter to my grandchildren who call me Grand C:

Dear Ennio and Cece,

Grand C has just received this prestigious recognition.

I am often asked why and how I continue to work. I will now tell you my secret: I draw inspiration and energy from you. I continue working because I want to secure a just and honest society for you and for every Filipino child.

When I retired from the Supreme Court five years ago, I was ready to play the role of a doting grandmother. Called upon to help ensure a better future for our children, over the opposition of those who thought that gender and age were not in my favor, I did not shrink from this responsibility. Because the stark reality is that there are millions of other grandchildren who are being robbed of a bright future by those consumed with greed and lust for power.

This award proves the skeptics wrong. Indeed, gender and age are irrelevant in this crusade, the primary qualification being unassailable integrity, earned through consistent application of the rule of law. I pray that you —and all young Filipinos —imbibe the same moral value and pass it on to the next generation.

Today, we also celebrate the life of President Ramon Magsaysay. In school you will learn that President Magsaysay steered the Philippines to its golden years, his tenure being one of the cleanest and most corruption-free in the history of our country. We should look back to this glorious past as guiding light in our search for leaders of the same persuasion. Children should never lose faith. Children should never lose hope.

Please pray that Grand C and her colleagues at the Office of the Ombudsman will win the fight against corruption. Without the continued support of other stakeholders and most importantly, the family, it will remain an uphill battle.

Thus, I am accepting this award on behalf of my colleagues at the Office for their perseverance in carrying out our constitutional mandate as protectors of the people. I am also accepting this recognition on behalf of all anti-corruption advocates including journalists, civil society workers and good governance volunteers who complement the work of the Ombudsman. They are the real heroes in the fight against corruption.

I hope that our shared crusade results in succeeding generations of Filipinos who will not allow corruption to tear at the protective mantle of the rule of law, the anchor of our democracy. But it is up to us to stay safely anchored, or drift into the dangerous currents of anarchy. It is up to us to earn the distinction of being a society that lives by the credo of President Magsaysay that “those who have less in life should have more in law.”

Ennio and Cece, as you go to bed tonight, know that your grandmother is optimistic that your tomorrow will be a better day.