Former German chancellor Angela Merkel has won the United Nations refugee agency’s prestigious Nansen Refugee Award, receiving praise for her determination to protect asylum seekers while in office.
Pointing to the more than 1.2 million refugees and asylum seekers welcomed by Germany in 2015 and 2016, at the height of a migrant crisis sparked especially by the war in Syria, the UNHCR selection committee on Tuesday hailed Merkel’s “leadership, courage and compassion”.
At the time, the woman who led the German government for 16 years said the situation “put our European values to the test as seldom before.
It was no more and no less than a humanitarian imperative.”
“She showed what can be achieved when politicians take the right course of action and work to find solutions to the world’s challenges rather than simply shift responsibility to others.”
The Nansen award, granted annually, was created in 1954 in honour of the first UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Norwegian Arctic explorer and humanitarian Fridtjof Nansen, to mark outstanding work on behalf of refugees.
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