On Thursday 12 October, the members of the European Parliament’s Committees on Foreign Affairs and Development, and the Sub-Committee on Human Rights named the three finalists for the 2023 Sakharov Prize.
They are the young Iranian woman Jina Mahsa Amini - who died a year ago in the jails of the “morality police” - and the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, Vilma Núñez de Escorcia and Monsignor Rolando José Álvarez Lagos of Nicaragua, human rights activists and critics of the Ortega regime, and Justyna Wydrzyńska in Poland, Morena Herrera in El Salvador and Colleen McNichols in the United States, who are fighting for free, safe and legal abortion (see EUROPE 13254/19).
The other candidates in the running were the pro-European people of Georgia and Nino Lomjaria, a former Public Defender of Georgia, the CEO of X, Elon Musk, the Ugandan climate activist and human rights defender Vanessa Nakate, and finally, Afghan education activists Marzia Amiri, Parasto Hakim, and Matiullah Wesa.
The Conference of Presidents will decide on the winner on 19 October, and the prize will be awarded on 13 December at a formal sitting in Strasbourg. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)