Newswise — Romeo Dallaire has been chosen by Delta Air Lines Inc. and The University of Georgia as the 2012 recipient of the Delta Prize for Global Understanding.
Dallaire, the prominent Canadian senator and retired lieutenant-general, is the founder of the Child Soldier Initiative, a project housed at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
The Delta Prize for Global Understanding began in 1997 with an $890,000 endowment grant from the Delta Air Lines Foundation. The prize includes a sculpture, a $10,000 cash award and a $50,000 travel allowance from Delta for a non-profit organization of the recipient’s choice.
Dallaire has chosen to give this $60K award to the Child Soldiers Initiative (CSI), which is housed at Dalhousie University’s Centre for Foreign Policy Studies. The Child Soldiers Initiative is dedicated to stopping the use of child soldiers across the world. As an advocate for human rights, Dallaire has stated it is his lifelong mission to work towards the eradication of the use of child soldiers.
Dr. Shelly Whitman, director of the Child Soldier Initiative and deputy director of the Centre for Foreign Policy Studies at Dalhousie, is thrilled. “It is wonderful to have a prize that recognizes the dedication of Roméo Dallaire and that will be of great assistance to the critical work CSI is conducting towards the eradication of the use of child soldiers globally,” she says.
To date, close to $1 million has been raised in support of this mission.Dallaire was appointed force commander of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda prior to and during the 1994 genocide. His most recent publication, “They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children,” details his passion for finding innovative solutions to the problem of child soldiering. He will accept the Delta Prize March 16, 2012 at the Georgia Center for Continuing Education Conference Center and Hotel.
For more information about the Child Soldier Initiative, visit http://childsoldiersinitiative.org/
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