More than a billion young people today begin life crippled by poor diets. Even in Thailand, which exports food, more than half of all infants and preschool children suffered from malnutrition as recently as 1980. Lacking healthy bodies and alert minds, malnourished children reinforce the tenacious cycle of ignorance and poverty. As a medical scientist Dr. AREE VALYASEVI has investigated this vexing problem for 27 years. 

AREE received his medical education at Siriraj Hospital Medical College in Bangkok and subsequently studied advanced pediatrics and nutrition at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States. He first became aware of the deficient health and diets of rural Thais while conducting a countrywide nutritional survey in 1960. What he saw prompted him to abandon his newly begun private practice to pursue research devoted to rural public health. 

Intrigued by the high incidence among poor children in northeast Thailand of painful and debilitating bladder stone disease, AREE traced the cause to minerally imbalanced diets, combined with mild dehydration induced by heat, chronic diarrhea, vomiting and fever. He found that phosphate-rich dietary supplements could reduce bladder stone formation. This preventive measure is now used in other countries where bladder stone disease is prevalent. 

From 1976 AREE tackled protein-energy malnutrition (PEM), the most serious form of malnourishment among Thailand?s rural children. With his colleagues and students at Mahidol University’s Institute of Nutrition — which he helped found in 1976 — AREE devised palatable protein energy-rich food mixes for infants. Made from locally available beans, sesame seeds and groundnuts, these mixes can be manufactured cheaply by the villagers themselves. When introduced in Nong Hai Village, his pilot site, the percentage of normal healthy children rose from 45 to 79 in eight months. 

AREE discovered that it is “essential to integrate health care, agriculture and income generation into the nutritional package.” The means of improvement, he adds, “must be in the villagers’ own hands.” His effective advocacy encouraged adoption by the Ministry of Health of integrated, community-based nutritional programs in Thailand. Since 1981 such programs have been incorporated into national development plans and introduced, along with AREE’s food mixes, to some 12,500 villages. The incidence of PEM has declined by half, and third-degree malnutrition, the severest level of malnutrition, is 62 times rarer today than 10 years ago. 

A colleague describes 61-year-old AREE as a visionary who “works, works, works.” Aside from research and teaching he has authored or coauthored several medical textbooks and more than 78 scientific papers, and has served on numerous commissions and agencies. As Founding Dean of Ramathibodi Medical School (1968 to 1977), AREE introduced a comprehensive course on community health. His internationally respected curriculum emphasizes disease prevention and requires medical students to learn techniques of community diagnosis and planning. It also encourages young doctors to stay in rural practice following the two years the government requires of them. Some one-third of Ramathibodi’s graduates have done so, giving Thailand, with AREE’s guidance, a new generation of doctors for a new generation of healthier children. 

In electing Dr. AREE VALYASEVI to receive the 1987 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership, the Board of Trustees recognizes his contribution in improving the diets and promoting the good health of millions of Thai children.

Today I am very thrilled and honored to be here to receive the 1987 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership. 

This prestigious Award is universally known to be given in recognition of persons who contribute in various ways to human societies in accordance with the ideals of Ramon Magsaysay. 

Most developing countries in Asia are facing similar health and nutritional problems as a result of poverty, social injustice, improper feeding habits, poor sanitation, lack of safe water and inadequate health care facilities. The leading causes of children’s death in developing countries are still malnutrition and infections of various kinds. These unfortunate children get caught in a vicious cycle of malnutrition and frequent infections, absence from schools or work, illiteracy and poverty. When these children become parents it is likely that their offspring will enter the same vicious cycle. 

Solutions to these important and urgent problems must be found and something must be done to remedy the situation; knowledge and experiences gained in one country can be shared with others. It is our hope that malnutrition will gradually disappear by the turn of this century. All of want to live in a world where man can live with man in honor and peace. This is, in fact, the spirit and aspiration of the great leader, Ramon Magsaysay. 

I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere gratitude to the members of the Board of Trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for selecting me for the Award and inviting me here. However, my work is not possible without the enthusiastic support of my staff at Mahidol University’s Faculty of Medicine, Ramathibodi Hospital, and the Institute of Nutrition. I thank them and I would like to thank also the agencies which have given generous support for my work during the past 25 years.

In three short decades the 20 million citizens of Taiwan have witnessed the transformation of their mountainous, predominantly agrarian island into a prosperous and highly competitive industrial and commercial power. A new generation of entrepreneurs, managers, bureaucrats and academics is now trying to steer Taiwan’s economy away from labor-intensive industry toward high technology, and changing founder led enterprises into manager-run corporations. For Taiwan, which has formal diplomatic ties with only 23 countries, business and trade with some 150 nations is today the key to domestic prosperity and the essence of its foreign relations. Professional journalism in Taiwan failed to keep pace with these changes until Tien Sia, or CommonWealth, appeared. Founded by its editor and publisher DIANE YUN-PENG YING in 1981 to bring substance and style to business reporting, it has become a significant force in promoting economic progress, combined with social responsibility, in Taiwan. When YING and two colleagues started CommonWealth, business journalism in Taiwan was primitive: the new venture’s competitors were few, unreliable and often unreadable. As a professionally produced business magazine of high quality, hers was the first to succeed. Launching the magazine was risky, especially because its price was dauntingly high. Avoiding sensation and stridency, it was a sober newcomer to Taiwanese newsstands. Yet, its first printing of 10,000 in June 1981 sold out in two days, and circulation is now more than 90,000; it reaches an estimated 630,000 individual readers monthly. Among the more than 2,700 magazines, it is one of Taiwan’s most popular. Every month CommonWealth offers concisely written articles on business, finance, production management and international trade. Its hallmark is in-depth and critical reporting on social and economic trends in education, demography and Taiwan’s relations with Japan and other economic partners and competitors. The style is easy-to-read and lively. Her readers, says YING, have too little time for ponderous scholarly journals. Although it is a thoroughly private enterprise, CommonWealth‘s objectives in stimulating economic innovation and social progress in Taiwan synchronize with those of the government. YING, who is 46 and came with her family from the Chinese mainland as a child, started the magazine without influential connections. She relied upon her prodigious capacity for work and lessons of two decades of fruitful education and experience, including a BA in English Literature from the University of Chengkung in Taiwan, and an MA in Journalism from the University of Iowa in the United States. For two years she reported local news and wrote feature stories for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Back in Asia, she worked for USIS and covered Taiwan for United Press International, the New York Times and the Asian Wall Street Journal. Gradually she conceived the idea of a Chinese language business magazine the caliber of Fortune. Another woman, Cora Li-hsing Wang, and Charles H.C. Kao, Professor of Economics at the University of Wisconsin, became her partners as business manager and president, respectively. All three invested their personal savings in the venture. More than a publishing success, YING’s magazine is establishing standards for journalism in Taiwan. Articles are thoroughly researched and well written, complementing fine design and printing. In achieving such high standards, YING persists in training her young reporters personally. Exemplifying her personal philosophy which identifies talent with work, she takes a hand in every phase of the magazine’s production. Her attention to substance and quality accounts for CommonWealth’s growing reputation as an authoritative, must read publication in Taiwan’s boardrooms, government offices and academic halls. In electing DIANE YUN-PENG YING to receive the 1987 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts, the Board of Trustees recognizes her contribution of economic reporting and business journalism to Taiwan’s industrial and commercial vitality.

It is a great honor for me to receive the Ramon Magsaysay Award, which is established in memory of one of the most respected Asian leaders in recent history.

Since this is the first time the Ramon Magsaysay Award in Journalism is given to a candidate from Taiwan, it is also an honor, I believe, shared by all my fellow journalists in Taiwan in general, and by my young colleagues at CommonWealth Magazine in particular.

The Award carries a great encouragement. It reconfirms my belief that journalism is a profession worth life-long devotion. Despite the long trying hours and the constant self-doubt that is part of the search for the ever-so-elusive truth, a journalist nevertheless encounters a very challenging and fulfilling mission. Journalism, perhaps, is the best profession in the world, because a journalist is paid to learn, and life itself is a process of ceaseless learning.

The Award is also a great inspiration, because it calls attention to the often forgotten importance of using writing, reporting, and publishing as “a power for the public good.”

When all over the world every day news is full of killings, starvation, crimes, disasters, political strives and trade wars, when “bad news” becomes the synonym of “news,” it is time for journalists to reexamine our roles.

Must we be nothing more than a commercial tool where news is regarded as a product for sale, a source of entertainment, and a journalist’s ultimate goal is to seek personal gain, fame, money and power?

Or can we, and should we, become a positive force in society, helping to build better understanding between the government and the people, to form consensus in a nation, and to foster hope among fellow human beings?

The Ramon Magsaysay Award serves as a great enlightenment.

As enjoined by the Holy Koran, devout Muslims everywhere aspire to fulfill Islam’s Fifth Pillar (one of five obligatory duties), the pilgrimage to Mecca. Required only of those who can afford it, the haj has for centuries inspired believers to enterprise, thrift and self-imposed hardship to accumulate wealth sufficient for the journey. For Muslims in distant Southeast Asia, the pilgrimage was costly, arduous and fraught with hazard. Few could undertake it. 

Since its establishment as an independent state Malaysia has striven to bring the pilgrimage within the means of more of its Muslim citizens, and to make their trip to Mecca orderly and safe. The Pilgrimage Management and Fund Board, Tabung Haji, has now largely achieved this goal under the creative leadership of Dato’ HAJI HANAFIAH BIN HAJI AHMAD. HANAFIAH entered the Civil Service from the University of Malaya and was posted in 1963 to Jiddah, Saudi Arabia. Encountering Malaysian pilgrims scrambling for food and accommodations amidst strange surroundings, he energetically undertook to help them. These efforts prompted Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak to choose HANAFIAH as Tabung Haji‘s Deputy Director General in 1974. Within three years he was made Director General. 

Aware that many pilgrims are rural folk without experience in foreign travel, HANAFIAH has expanded Tabung Haji‘s activities to make it an effective “people’s organization.” Formerly discouraged by ignorance and bureaucratic hurdles, pilgrims now seek assistance from the 69 branch offices of Tabung Haji throughout the country which coordinate the issuing of passports, visas and health documents, and which brief the pilgrims thoroughly about each stage of their prospective journey. Today’s pilgrim is whisked from Malaysia directly to Jiddah aboard jets chartered by Tabung Haji from the national airline, staffed with personnel trained to attend to their needs. From Jiddah buses carry them to prearranged quarters around Mecca. Throughout the holy rituals they are cared for by Tabung Haji staff members who provide information, banking facilities and familiar Malaysian foods, and who organize mobile clinics and a hospital to keep illness and mortality to a minimum. Today the vast majority of Malaysia’s pilgrims — nearly 25,000 annually — avail themselves of Tabung Haji‘s comprehensive services. 

Financing their pilgrimage has been a chronic problem for most Muslims; savings for this event formerly might be hidden away beneath the house floor in earthen jars or secreted in a bamboo rafter. But today, due to public confidence instilled by HANAFIAH, over 1,000,000 Malaysians deposit their savings with Tabung Haji, which keeps individual computerized accounts. This growing fund is astutely invested in oil palm plantations, rubber estates, electronics firms, real estate and other profitable projects. Besides earning an approximate eight percent dividend for its investors — all in strict keeping with Islamic precepts — Tabung Haji serves a secondary purpose, as a source of capital for spurring Malaysia’s progress. 

Born 49 years ago in Kedah, HANAFIAH personifies a new generation of Malaysian civil servants who have been trained at home and abroad since independence. Under his devoted and upright leadership Tabung Haji‘s 900-member professional staff is providing facilities whereby Muslims may both carry out the precepts of Islam (which is Malaysia’s official religion), and enhance their own prosperity. The new 38-story office tower which houses the organization’s national headquarters — a gleaming architectural wonder on the skyline of Kuala Lumpur — is a dramatic symbol of Tabung Haji‘s high national profile and its importance to Malaysia today. 

In electing Dato’ HAJI HANAFIAH BIN HAJI AHMAD to receive the 1987 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Government Service, the Board of Trustees recognizes his enabling tens of thousands of devout Malaysian Muslims to accumulate savings and safely and economically make a cherished pilgrimage to Mecca.

I would like first of all to thank the members of the Board of Trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for erecting me as the 1987 Ramon Magsaysay Awardee for Government Service. 

The late Ramon Magsaysay is regarded as a defender of the people, a president dedicated to eliminating injustice and exploitation, one who had a vision for a better future for the common man. He cared for all and wanted to ensure that the people were not squeezed or cheated by those with greater power, influence or wealth. 

One of the main aims of the Malaysian Pilgrims Management and Fund Board (Tabung Haji) is to prevent the exploitation of ordinary pilgrims by middlemen — a situation which was rife during the colonial period. Since formation, Tabung Haji has been able to eliminate the middleman at all levels, help make the pilgrimage more orderly and provide better facilities for about 25,000 pilgrims each year. 

Before the establishment of Tabung Haji, Muslims in Malaysia, 70 percent of whom live in the rural areas and make up the poorest section of the population, used to save for the haj by keeping their money in pillows, under the bed, in cupboards or in jars buried in the ground. These traditional methods of saving — designed to avoid having their money tainted by interest which is forbidden by Islam — were not only detrimental to the rural economy but also to national economic growth. 

The government formulated a scheme to invest money put aside for the haj in business activities which are permitted by Islam. From 1,281 depositors with approximately US$20,000 worth of deposits in 1963, Tabung Haji today has over 1,000,000 depositors and assets worth some US$500,000,000. 

Tabung Haji‘s economic activities in oil palm and cocoa plantations, housing and industrial concerns bring benefit not only to the depositors who receive a yearly share of the profits, but also to the economy of the country, creating thousands of jobs for Muslims and non-Muslims alike. The Tabung Haji is not only an institution serving the needs of Muslims but the population at large. 

An important lesson learned from the success of Tabung Haji is the necessity of political support and the avoidance of political interference. The Malaysian government’s support for Tabung Haji has been an essential ingredient in its success. But even more important has been its non-interference in the professional and business decisions of the board. There is no dearth of brilliant economists and planners in Asia, but lack of political support, as well as the disease of political interference, corruption and nepotism, have meant that the plans of many organizations have not achieved their target. 

Members of Tabung Haji‘s staff have developed an attitude of genuine respect for the dignity and importance of all who deal with the organization. They are always available to the people. The organization has been able to develop this spirit of service and dedication among its staff as we believe that public service is a trust. Of ricers of Tabung Haji regard themselves as servants of the people who have put their trust in the organization. They have eliminated bureaucratic hurdles and difficulties facing the people and made its services easily accessible to all, with minimum difficulty and cost. 

To me this Award is not only an acknowledgment of the innovative and pioneering role of Tabung Haji in serving the needs of Malaysian Muslims — and of Muslim minorities in other countries in the Pacific region — in performing their religious obligations, but also of its important role in contributing to the economic and social development of Malaysia. The latter benefits both Muslims and non-Muslims. 

I am indeed honored to serve as chief executive of this organization with its dedicated and loyal staff and, as a Malay, I am proud to accept this Award, which is dedicated to the ideals of one of the Malay world’s illustrious sons, the late President Magsaysay.

In the formative years of a nation the life span of a story or poem can be fleeting. Literary works may blossom one season in cheaply made books or little magazines that pass from hand to hand, and vanish the next. Books go astray and are abandoned to insects and weather. Whole libraries are lost to upheaval. Authors often fail to save their own manuscripts and early publications. 

HANS BAGUE JASSIN recognized that these early works of imagination and intellect are precious. As the struggle for daily existence and for viable nationhood imposed other urgent priorities upon Indonesians and their government, it was his inspiration to collect and save the early flowerings of Indonesia’s literary life. 

JASSIN, who was born July 1917 in Gorontalo, North Sulawesi, has devoted his lifetime to Indonesian literature. While in high school he immersed himself in the new Indonesian-language novels, stories and poems beginning to proliferate in the waning days of Dutch control of the East Indies. He was himself a student writer and editor. 

Joining in 1940 Balai Pustaka, a government publishing house fostering indigenous writing, he was at the center of the emerging and vibrant national literary life. Writers of the new generation became his friends, and he made it his life’s work to promote, write about and collect their output. 

During the Japanese occupation, and through the struggle for independence, JASSIN edited a succession of literary magazines. From 1953 he taught Indonesian literature at the University of Indonesia, simultaneously completing his own degree there in the Faculty of Arts, and in 1958 studied comparative literature at Yale University. He gave his countrymen the first full translation of the 19th century Dutch classic about Java, Eduard Douwes Dekker’s Max Havelaar, and translated the Koran into poetic Indonesian. 

In time JASSIN became Indonesia’s most prolific literary critic, an influential voice in determining literary standards and in advancing the cause of free expression. During the ideological debates of the early 1960s he promulgated the famous “Cultural Manifesto,” denouncing art which served only one political voice. Later he risked incarceration by refusing to divulge the identity of a controversial author. 

From his earliest days as an editor and critic JASSIN collected and scrupulously saved every book and magazine he could beg or buy, plus correspondence, manuscripts, bookreviews, clippings and photographs which might help him understand a short story, novel, poem or play and its author. These he filed and drew upon for his articles, books and lectures. 

His growing collection, assembled entirely with his own funds, became Indonesia’s most exhaustive library and archive for literary research. From the beginning he shared it openheartedly with students and scholars from around the world. 

In 1976, after JASSIN’s hoard of folders and books had overflowed his own house into his brother’s, the then governor of Jakarta, Ali Sadikin, stepped in to provide proper facilities for his collection and a modest subsidy for its operation. Since then the city of Jakarta has housed the H.B.Jassin Center for Literary Documentation, now on one floor of a new building, and provided it with the accoutrements of a modern archive. The annual government subsidy covers the cost of utilities and staff salaries. As custodian and administrator JASSIN takes no pay and in part still finances new acquisitions from his university pension and royalties from his books. The collection, which now exceeds 50,000 volumes, continues to grow. 

In electing HANS BAGUE JASSIN to receive the 1987 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service, the Board of Trustees recognizes his preserving for Indonesians their literary heritage.

The world has taught us to be useful, even in the most simple way. What I have done in the last fifty years is very simple, very easy. It very easy. It could have been done and can be done by anyone else, man or woman, r woman, adult or child. I have only been collecting other people?s works, keeping, keeping them and, as far as I am able, sharing my perceptions of them. 

Literary documentation, according to me, is a kind of album, a collection of thoughts, aspirations of human conscience. I have spent almost all of my life happily collecting such, rather like a small child gathering different kinds of leaves in a beautiful forest, before they are blown away by the wind. 

A journalist asked me one day “Can a pretty petal make the whole flower beautiful?” My answer was that everything under the sun has its place in the degrees of beauty. As for me, even though not all seems to me beautiful, I have no heart to discard anything I always see a pearl somewhere. Literary pearls touch human souls and help us to understand one another. As long as I can collect them, keep them and write about them, I will continue to do so. 

Today the work that has made me happy for years has been acclaimed a valuable asset and it has enabled me to receive the Ramon Magsaysay Award. This award is an honor, recognized by those who love simplicity, freedom and peace, especially in Asia. 

I have said that literary documentation is collecting human aspirations. By bestowing this prize for such work, the Foundation, in the name of the noble Ramon Magsaysay, has honored human aspirations. 

The Center for Literary Documentation which I established is not my personal possession. It is for everyone, especially for lovers of literature. 

Like leaves which can not be differentiated politically, literature as human conscience is the universal language of mankind. It should not be labelled by nationality or political view. 

So, on behalf of all lovers of literature, on behalf of all writers and poets whose works now fill the H.B. Jassin Center for Literary Documentation and who have thus enabled me to be honored as a public servant, I herewith accept the Ramon Magsaysay Award, humbly and gratefully. 

I believe that the Award will help people realize that the world of literature is very rich and includes the literature of Indonesia.

To the over 100 million modern inhabitants of “golden Bengal” (Bangladesh), geography and history have dealt a cruel fate. Their once prosperous land — where waters of the giant Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers join and empty into the Bay of Bengal — is hostage to nature’s violence, and to man’s. Bangladeshis have endured an unfair share of famine, flood, communal discord, political strife, mass migrations and war. Dearth is their common lot. Since 1952 Fr. RICHARD WILLIAM TIMM has absorbed himself in the life and struggles of the Bangladeshis. In that year, newly arrived from theological studies at Holy Cross College and graduate specialization in biology and parasitology at Catholic University of America, both in Washington, D.C., he established a science department at St. Gregory’s College in Dhaka, then East Pakistan. Over succeeding years at Dhaka Medical College, and Notre Dame College, (as St. Gregory’s was renamed), he introduced a generation of Bangladeshi students to the biological sciences. Simultaneously engaged in research, he discovered 250 new species of nematodes (parasitic worms) and produced 70 scientific papers. When the cyclone and massive tidal surge of November 1970 devastated the coast of Bengal, TIMM mobilized relief. Distributing emergency food, blankets, medicines, and subsequently seeds and work animals, TIMM for the first time encountered brutal communal conflicts and rural power struggles. These intensified when the Pakistani military belatedly joined in the international relief efforts, and during the revolt, civil war and bloody struggle for independence that followed. His involvement revealed to TIMM the harsh, uncertain world of Bangladeshi villagers and led him to forsake teaching and devote himself wholly to rehabilitation, rural development, and the reduction of communal tensions and social injustices. TIMM was the first Planning Officer of the Christian Organization for Relief and Rehabilitation (CORR), and later became its National Director when it became Caritas Bangladesh. Initiating and coordinating relief funded by foreign charities, he demonstrated a concern for all in need, regardless of creed or ethnic origin. Directing and monitoring projects in irrigation, drainage, health and jute handicrafts, the six-foot two native of Michigan City, Indiana, became a familiar champion, cutting through bureaucratic obstacles and moving practical assistance to the villagers. To the (now) more than 130 voluntary agencies which he brought together in 1974 to form the Association of Development Agencies in Bangladesh (ADAB), TIMM was a guiding spirit. Typically, he relinquished leadership positions quickly: “This has been my role,” he says, “to get organizations going and then to let Bangladeshis take over.” Issues of social injustice preoccupy him today. Through the Justice and Peace Commission of the Catholic Church TIMM investigated the exploitation of tribal minorities, and exposed the harmful working conditions of the poor and landless women employed as domestics, health workers, and in the garment, tea and cigarette industries. After a series of conferences on these problems, working women in 1986 urged him to organize the Coordinating Council for Human Rights in Bangladesh. TIMM concludes that Bangladesh’s pervasive poverty is caused largely by the crippling powerlessness of the rural poor. He believes that arousing the poor to awareness and action is the first step toward reform. Now 64, and Superior of the Holy Cross Fathers in Bangladesh, TIMM confides, “I have more hope in changed people than in changed structures and political systems.” In electing Reverend Father RICHARD WILLIAM TIMM to receive the 1987 Ramon Magsaysay Award for International Understanding, the Board of Trustees recognizes his 35 years of sustained commitment of mind and heart to helping Bangladeshis build their national life.

First of all I should like to pay homage to the memory of theory of the late President Magsaysay, whose 80th birth anniversary we celebrate to celebrate today. When I worked in the Philippines in 1964 on a SEATO Research Fellowship on plant-parasitic nematodes, or roundworms, I recall the great affection and respect in which he was held by all. Therefore I salute him and his dedication to freedom and human rights as I receive with give with great gratitude this Award which is named in his honor.

In the Code of Procedure for the Award it says that the Award is ordinarily given for one’s past five years’ activities. Yet the citation for my Award states: “for 35 years of sustained commitment of mind and heart to helping Bangladeshis build up their nation.” I am happy that this exception has been made for me. I have probably had more careers than any previous Magsaysay Awardee?in college and university teaching; in administrative work in Notre Dame College, Caritas Bangladesh and my own religious community; in scientific research; recently in human rights activities. None of these alone would merit any award, but none of them should be considered in isolation from the others. For they all belong to one continuous role as educator.

Half my working life I was an educator in institutions — an ivory tower scholar, I am reluctant to admit. But it is never too late for conversion and it was the poor the poor and the powerless, the voiceless ones, who converted me and forced me to become a practical educator. The country I call my home Bangladesh — is known as “golden Bengal.” These are the words of our national anthem. Both the words and music were composed by that giant of Bengali literature and song, Rabindranath Tagore. In the waning monsoon months the “gob” the “golden fiber”– jute” — is everywhere seen throughout the land. In the cooler days of winter the golden sun bathes the countryside in its warm glow, and rice end vegetables spring from the soil. Bangladesh is not only amar sonar Bangla (My golden Bengal) butamar shobuj Bangla (my green Bengal) . In every season of the year its verdant fields and forests are vests are alive with growth.

Yet there is want and misery and the distress of frequent natural calamities. It was not always so. In the beginning the Lord said: “Be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of heaven and all living animals on the earth. See, I give you all the seed-bearing plants that are upon the whole earth, and all the trees with seed-bearing fruit; this shall be your food.” (Gen. 1:28-29) The plethora of food from the fields no longer reaches all the mouths that are hungry. As human greed expanded and world resources contracted, a fierce competition among rivals has too often replaced sharing and international understanding between brothers and sisters.

I accept this Award in the name of the youth and the poor and powerless of Bangladesh, the people whose lives have been touched by my efforts of the past 35 years. We cannot really share the life of the poorest of the poor. We would be dead in a week if we tried to live under the same wretched conditions. But I have tried to analyze and expose some of the reasons for their degrading poverty. It is for that reason that I have concentrated in recent years on human rights activities. If the people can be organized to understand and defend their basic rights, they can also learn to make the decisions that influence their destinies. Thus, human rights and participatory development go hand-in-hand.

I thank the Board of Trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Foundation for the honor they have conferred on me. My best wishes and blessings to all of you who share with us in our joy this day.