This year the Ramon Magsaysay Award will be given to Cambodia’s Sothiara Chhim (psychiatrist), Japan’s Tadashi Hatori (ophthalmologist), Philippines’ Bernadette Madrid (child gag specialist) and Indonesia’s Gary Bencheghib (activist and filmmaker).
Ramon Magsaysay Award Winner 2022
- Sothiara Chhim, a 54-year-old Cambodian, was rewarded for dedicating her life to helping those suffering under the Khmer Rouge regime (this regime was highly autocratic, totalitarian, xenophobic, racist, paranoid, violent, and repressive).
- Tadashi Hatori, a 58-year-old Japanese ophthalmologist, was honored for providing free eye surgery in Vietnam, where such specialists and facilities are limited.
- Bernadette Madrid, 64, has received an award for helping domestic abuse victims and setting up a child protection center in the Philippines.
- 27-year-old French environmental activist and filmmaker Gary Bencheghib has been given the award for his efforts to clean up Indonesia’s polluted waterways.
About Ramon Magsaysay Award
- It is Asia’s highest honor which was instituted in the year 1957.
- It is named after Ramon Magsaysay, the third President of the Republic of the Philippines.
- Primarily, the award is given to individuals and organizations for their remarkable work in five categories: government service, public service, community leadership, journalism, literature and the arts of creative communication, and peace and international understanding.
- An amount of fifty thousand dollars is given as a prize.
- The first Indian to receive the Ramon Magsaysay Award was Acharya Vinoba Bhave who was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 1958.
- Mother Teresa was the first Indian woman to be awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award in the year 1962.
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