The Sergio Vieira de Mello Award will be presented to Interpeace local partner in Timor-Leste on Monday 12 December 2011.

Joao Boavida, Executive Director of the Centre of Studies for Peace and Development(CEPAD) will be accepting the prize from Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and President of Timor-Leste, José Ramos-Horta.

Boavida will be present to accept the prize on behalf of CEPAD and all those brave individuals that support the organization’s peacebuilding work.

“The CEPAD team is working tirelessly to enable Timorese society to build lasting peace. A country with a violent past is now turning itself around to become a flagship example of how peace must be build from within a society. Respect for human rights is a key part of this process,” explains Renée Larivière, Programme Development Director at Interpeace.

CEPAD was created following the devastating violence of 2006 that resulted in a number of deaths and extensive destruction of property. More than 160,000 people fled to rural districts, with many ending up in internally displaced persons’ camps in and around Dili.

“It is a great honor to have been selected for this award. We owe this recognition not just to the CEPAD team, but to all the brave Timorese across the country that have participated in our work, sharing their ideas, inputs and insights,” stated Joao Boavida, Executive Director of CEPAD.

Larivière confirms: “The peacebuilding work carried out by the CEPAD team is exemplary. In difficult conditions they never lose site of the being inclusive, no matter the subject they are dealing with. It has been through this approach that they have managed to achieve so much, importantly, with the support of all levels and sectors of society.”

Sergio Vieira de Mello, acting as the UN Secretary-General Special Representative in Iraq, was killed, with 21 of his colleagues, in a car bomb attack in Baghdad on 19 August 2003. This award, the annual lecture and other events and prizes commemorate his life and achievements.