Mexican journalist, author, feminist and human-rights activist Lydia Cacho Ribeiro will be awarded the 19th Wallenberg Medal at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 8 in Rackham Auditorium. After the medal presentation, Cacho will give the Wallenberg Lecture.
A fearless and courageous defender of the rights of women and children in Mexico, Cacho routinely risks her life to shelter women from abuse and challenge powerful government and business leaders who profit from child prostitution and pornography. Journalist Marianne Pearl has described Cacho as “a woman of great strength and courage, and who is deeply committed to ethical journalism and the advancement of human rights in Mexico for the long haul.”
Confronted with countless credible threats against her life, Cacho has refused offers of asylum from the United States, France and Spain. She will not leave her country and abandon the women and children she has dedicated her life to protecting.
Cacho has received many awards for her work as a humanitarian and a journalist, including the State Journalists Prize in 2000, the Amnesty International Ginetta Sagan Award for Women and Children’s Rights in 2007, and the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano Freedom of Expression Award in 2008.
Her unflinching determination to carry on her work in the face of repeated threats on her life makes her a superb example of the humanitarianism of Raoul Wallenberg, event organizers say.
The Raoul Wallenberg Endowment was established in 1985 to commemorate Wallenberg and to recognize those whose own courageous actions call to mind Wallenberg’s extraordinary accomplishments and values.
A 1935 graduate of the College of Architecture, Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat, saved the lives of tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews near the end of World War II.
