A Brazilian nun who has helped refugees and migrants for 40 years on Wednesday won the Nansen prize awarded every year by the U.N. High Commission for Refugees for outstanding work to protect internally displaced and stateless people.
Sister Rosita Milesi, 79, is a member of the Catholic order of the Scalabrini nuns, who are renowned for their service to refugees worldwide. Her parents were poor farmers from an Italian background in southern Brazil, and she became a nun at 19.
As a lawyer, social worker and activist, Milesi championed the rights and dignity of refugees and migrants of different nationalities in Brazil for four decades.
The UNHCR Nansen Refugee Award was established in 1954 in honor of Norwegian humanitarian, scientist, explorer, and diplomat Fridtjof Nansen. UNHCR announced the award in Geneva.
Milesi joins a long list of distinguished global laureates, including former U.S. first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, the first person to receive the award when it was set up in 1954, the charity Medecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) and Germany’s former chancellor Angela Merkel.
She is the second Brazilian to receive the award. Former Sao Paulo Archbishop Dom Paulo Evaristo Arns won the prize in 1985.
Milesi leads the Migration and Human Rights Institute (IMDH) in Brasilia, through which she has helped thousands of forced migrants and displaced people access essential services such as shelter, healthcare, education and legal assistance.
She coordinates RedeMIR, a national network of 60 organizations that operates throughout Brazil, including in remote border regions, to support refugees and migrants.
Her work has had a significant impact on Brazil’s legal landscape, including the shaping of its 1997 refugee law and the 2017 migration law, which enshrined critical protections for displaced people and reduced the risk of statelessness, UNHCR said in a statement.
