Wade Henderson Receives Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award

Human Rights News 12.10,10

Wade Henderson, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, was one of four recipients of The Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights today.  Recipients are honored for advocating “tirelessly for human rights, both at home and abroad.”

“I cannot begin to tell you how humbled I am to receive this award in the name of Eleanor Roosevelt, whose devotion to civil and human rights gave birth to a set of universal principles that continue to transform our world for good,” said Henderson.  “This award really belongs to The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition of more than 200 national organizations working together for an America as good as its ideals.”

President Bill Clinton established the award in 1998 in honor of the legendary human rights advocate Eleanor Roosevelt, whose work included spearheading the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10, 1948 – 62 years ago today.

The declaration articulates the fundamental rights to which every person is entitled and which all national governments should strive to protect. The document was drafted by the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, which was chaired at the time by Roosevelt.

This year’s recipients also include:

  • Sarah Cleto Rial, the program director for My Sister’s Keeper, an organization that works to advance political, social and economic justice for women and girls in Sudan;
  • Alice Hartman Henkin, director of the Justice and Society Program at the Aspen Institute; and
  • Professor Louis Henkin, chairman of the Center for the Study of Human Rights at Colombia University (posthumous).

The award caps a year in which The Leadership Conference – which is celebrating its 60th anniversary as the nation’s premier civil and human rights coalition – has taken a more central role in promoting human rights principles as a tool to advance domestic civil rights.  In January of 2010, The Leadership Conference changed its official name from the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights to The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights to honor the legacy and foresight of its founders and to more explicitly cement the important connection between “civil rights” and “human rights” in everyone’s minds.