Human rights activists to be honored for work in Guatemala, Latin America

Two human rights defenders who have worked extensively in Guatemala and elsewhere in Latin America will be honored this month in New York with one of the largest human rights awards in the world.

The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA) and the Puffin Foundation have selected Fredy Peccerelli, executive director of the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation, and Kate Doyle, senior analyst of U.S. policy in Latin America at the National Security Archive, to receive the second annual ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism.

“Both Doyle and Peccerelli are indefatigable defenders of human rights who have played a seminal role in the fight against impunity in Latin America,” said Sebastian Faber, ALBA chair.

A determined and creative researcher-activist, Doyle has spent 20 years working tirelessly with Latin American human rights organizations and truth commissions—in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Peru—to obtain the declassification of U.S. government archives in support of their investigations.

Peccerelli is an innovative forensic anthropologist whose work has been instrumental to the first-ever conviction of Guatemalan military forces for crimes against humanity. As founding director of the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation, Peccerelli leads a team that, over the past 15 years, has exhumed hundreds of mass graves filled with victims of Guatemala’s civil war.

The award ceremony will take place May 13 at the Museum of the City of New York.

More information at www.alba-valb.org.