Vital Voices Tenth Annual Global Leadership Awards

Yesterday, April 12th, 2011, Vital Voices Global Partnership celebrated its Tenth Annual Vital Voices Global Leadership Awards. Vital Voices is the preeminent non-governmental organization that works to identify, train and support women leaders around the world. Vital Voices has supported the work of 10,000 emerging women leaders in nearly 130 countries. And those women have, in turn, mentored more than half a million women and girl leaders worldwide.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has attended every Leadership Award night since they began in 2002. She spoke this year saying, “…at a time when millions of women worldwide are still denied their rights, still excluded from the public debates in their societies, still subjected to violence inside and outside of the family, still barred from schools, courts, markets and public squares, it is even more remarkable that tonight’s honorees have accomplished all that they have.”  You can read Secretary Clinton's full remarks here.

The women honored this year included an entrepreneur from Afghanistan who provides job training for women; two peace activists from Israel – one Arab, one Jewish; a rescuer of trafficked women and girls in India; a presidential candidate from Cameroon; a longtime member of the United States Senate; and the leader of the democracy movement in Burma.

Receiving the Global Trailblazer award this year as “Voice of the Decade” is Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the voice of the Burmese democracy movement. Presenters spoke to Aung San Suu Kyi’s resilience and bravery in the face of isolation and violence. Upon conferring her the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1991, the Nobel Committee’s chairman declared: “Aung San Suu Kyi brings out something of the best in us. We feel we need precisely her sort of person in order to retain our faith in the future. That is what gives her such power as a symbol, and that is why any ill treatment of her feels like a violation of what we have most at heart.”

Watch the tribute to Aung San Suu Kyi featuring Desmond Tutu, Wangari Maathai, Mu Sochua, and Laura Bush.