FALLS CHURCH, Va. (ABP) — Officials at the Baptist World Alliance have, for the first time, honored a Baptist couple for their commitment to human rights.
Joao and Nora Matwawana, residents of Nova Scotia, will receive BWA's 2007 Denton and Janice Lotz Human Rights Award. The award will be presented this July at the alliance's annual General Council gathering, slated for Accra, Ghana.
The global umbrella group for Baptists has previously honored former President Jimmy Carter and other world leaders with human-rights awards.
Three-time refugees themselves, the couple has worked toward peace between warring factions in Burundi, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and their home nation of Angola. Parents of six, the Matwawanas had to leave Angola for Congo in 1961 and again in 1975. They fled once again — this time for Canada — in the early 1980s, as Angola's war for independence became more violent.
Their native country now enjoys relative peace under President Jose Eduardo dos Santos. Nonetheless, Angola continues to face social and economic problems due to more than four decades of virtually continual war.
Before Canadian Baptist Ministries commissioned them as missionaries, the Matwawanas taught primary school in Angola. They later worked for 24 years in the Congo.
Gary Nelson, general secretary of CBM and a vice president of the Baptist World Alliance, said in a statement about the award that Joao Matwawana's work consisted of “grassroots actions and initiatives that took place in the most dangerous of situations and the most unlikely locations while others were meeting only to discuss peace.”
Joao also worked as general secretary of the United Protestant Churches of Angola in Exile, while his wife trained African women.
John Keith, who wrote a 2006 biography, Wars Are Never Enough: The Joao Matwawana Story, said Joao learned how to hate from his grandfather and how to love from his father, later resolving that tension and becoming an effective diplomat for Africa. He also wrote highly of Nora, saying her efforts in mentoring African women were widespread and lasting.
BWA gives two human rights awards. The Carl and Olive Tiller Human Rights Award is given every five years during the group's largest meeting, the BWA World Congress. Carter received the Tiller award in 1995. The Denton and Janice Lotz Human Rights Award is an annual award honoring the organization's long-time general secretary, who will retire at the end of the year, and his wife. The first recipient was Gustavo Parajon, given at the 2006 BWA General Council meeting in Mexico City.
The awards recognize action to secure and protect human rights as stated in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other human-rights documents. The U.N. Commission on Human Rights, led by Eleanor Roosevelt in 1948, adopted the Universal Declaration. It consists of 30 articles that define human rights guaranteed to all people.
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