LONDON -- Activist and lawyer Henri Tiphagne has been named the winner of the eighth Human Rights Award by Amnesty International Germany for "tirelessly and bravely standing up" for human rights in India.
Tiphagne, the People's Watch founder who campaigns against discrimination and the use of torture, will be presented the award on April 25 at the Maxim Gorki Theatre in Berlin.
"Henri Tiphagne and his organisation People's Watch, while fighting to ensure the rights of others, are themselves being harassed and hampered in their work by the authorities. And there are other civil society organisations in India that are in a similar position," said Selmin Aliskan, director of Amnesty International Germany.
"The award is therefore meant to send a strong signal of support to the whole of the Indian human rights movement," Aliskan said.
Tiphagne has been named for the award for "tirelessly and bravely standing up for human rights," the rights group said.
People's Watch has been researching and documenting human rights violations, as well as providing legal representation to those affected for over 20 years, the group said.
The organisation also actively supports human rights education.
In 1997, Tiphagne founded an institute offering training for teachers as well as mentoring around school human rights education programmes. So far, they have managed to reach out to around 500,000 children in 18 Indian states.
Through the award, Amnesty aims to honour and support the awardees' exceptional human rights commitment and raise awareness of their work amongst the German public.
The award comes with 10,000 Euros (USD 10,876) provided by Amnesty Germany's foundation Stiftung Menschenrechte, F rderstiftung Amnesty.
Former award recipients include: Monira Rahman from Bangladesh (2006), Women of Zimbabwe Arise from Zimbabwe (2008), Abel Barrera from Mexico (2011) and Alice Nkom from Cameroon (2014).
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