As we continue to witness the dramatic national and international expansion of the Fair Food Program, we want to take a moment to congratulate acclaimed environmental activist Nnimmo Bassey on winning the 2024 Wallenberg Medal. Last year, CIW co-founder Lucas Benitez received the human rights award for the CIW’s successful efforts to tackle modern-day slavery, and to forge a worker-driven, market-powered solution that prevents extreme exploitation entirely with the FFP.
Nnimmo Bassey is an architect and director of the Nigeria-based ecological think-tank, Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) and a member of the steering committee of Oilwatch International, a network resisting the expansion of fossil fuel extraction in the Global South. He chaired Friends of the Earth International (2008-2012), was a co-recipient of the 2010 Right Livelihood Award, also known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize,” and received the Rafto Human Rights Prize in 2012.
From Immokalee, Florida – the birthplace of the Fair Food Program — we want to extend our heartfelt congratulations to Nnimmo Bassey, and wish him the best of luck in his continued efforts!
More than a prestigious award, the Wallenberg Medal is an opportunity to reflect on the links between our own efforts to protect fundamental human rights in corporate supply chains and the broader work of building a more just and humane global society, whether in Florida or in the Niger Delta. In both cases, we see vulnerable people mobilizing, against immeasurable odds and massive obstacles, to secure justice for themselves, their families, and their broader communities.
The Wallenberg Medal is named after Raoul Wallenber the University of Michigan in 1935 and saved the lives of tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews near the end of World War II. Many of its recipients, including Benitez and Bassey, have worked on the ‘frontline’ of human rights, forging innovative and lasting solutions to confront the causes of human suffering and indignity.
Notable Wallenberg Medal recipients over the past 30 years include Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Miep Gies, John Lewis, Masha Gessen, Elie Wiesel, Denis Mukwege, and His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso, Fourteenth Dalai Lama of Tibet.
Sioban Harlow, Professor Emerita of Epidemiology and Global Public Health and chair of the Wallenberg Medal Executive Committee, spoke about Bassey’s myriad contributions to advancing social and environmental justice:
“As an architect, poet, writer, and human rights advocate, Nnimmo Bassey works to address root cause issues driving climate migration, environmental and social impacts of extractive production, and hunger in the Niger Delta. His commitment to socio-ecological justice connects large-scale issues of climate change, exploitation of natural resources, and political/corporate intransigence to the lives of individuals in the Niger Delta and beyond.”
“Just as Raoul Wallenberg trained as an architect at the University of Michigan before bringing his multifaceted skills to humanitarian work, Bassey’s background as an architect undergirds his environmental leadership,” Harlow continued.
As we congratulate Bassey, we also want to share Benitez’ moving 2023 speech, which touches on how his own journey and experience working in the fields of the US drove him to join with his fellow farmworkers to build the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, and eventually to forge the Presidential Medal-winning Fair Food Program, which now protections tens of thousands of workers across 23 states and 3 countries including Chile and South Africa.
