Brazilian nun awarded UN refugee prize

Sister Rosita Milesi runs national network helping refugees across Brazil and has helped shape public policy.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees will present its annual Nansen Award to a Brazilian nun who has dedicated herself to helping migrants for decades.

The UN refugee agency announced the winner on Wednesday, lauding Sister Rosita Milesi for her work as a “lawyer, social worker and movement builder” helping internally displaced and stateless people over 40 years.

Milesi, 79, a member of the Catholic order of the Scalabrini nuns, had “personally assisted” thousands of people, ensuring them access to legal documents, shelter, food, healthcare, language training and the labour market, said UNHCR in a statement.

“If I take something on, I will turn the world upside down to make it happen,” said Milesi, the daughter of poor farmers of Italian extraction in southern Brazil, who became a nun at 19.

UNHCR highlighted Milesi’s work as a lawyer, saying it had been “instrumental” in shaping public policy – notably Brazil’s 1997 refugee law, which helped to improve refugee rights.

Milesi played a similar role in Brazil’s 2017 migration law, bringing together various groups and mobilising lawmakers.

She runs the Scalabrini order’s Migration and Human Rights Institute and also coordinates RedeMIR, a national network of 60 organisations operating across Brazil to support refugees and migrants.

Milesi was named alongside four regional winners: Burkinabe activist Maimouna Ba, who helped displaced children return to school, Syrian entrepreneur Jin Davod, whose platform connects trauma survivors with therapists, Sudan’s Nada Fadol, who mobilised aid for hundreds of refugee families fleeing to Egypt, and Nepal’s Deepti Gurung, who campaigned to reform Nepal’s citizenship laws after her daughters became stateless.

The Nansen Award was established in 1954 in honour of Norwegian humanitarian, scientist, explorer, and diplomat Fridtjof Nansen.

Milesi, the second Brazilian to win the award, joins a long list of distinguished global laureates, including the charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF) and Germany’s former chancellor Angela Merkel.

The awards will be presented in Geneva on October 14. Milesi will receive $100,000 to fund a project that complements her work. The regional winners receive $25,000 each.