The Gala Dinner is the Sydney Peace Foundation’s annual fundraising event. This iconic evening, held in the gracious Refectory in the Holme Building at the University of Sydney. offers you and your guests an opportunity to hear from inspiring speakers including Dr Navi Pillay.

Tickets are now on sale. 

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Judge Pillay will be in Sydney to accept the award to accept the award at the Sydney Peace Prize Lecture and Award Ceremony at the Sydney Town Hall.

Tickets are now on sale. 

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Kate Miranda, Director, NSW at Australian Red Cross will talk on the work of the Australian Red Cross, its 110 year anniversary celebration, the essential humanitarian work of the ARC, ICRC and IFRC and the Sydney Peace Prize.

In November, this year’s Peace Prize will be presented to the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement (the Movement), a humanitarian network of 17 million volunteers and staff, for saving lives and preventing the suffering of people affected by armed conflict, for the Movement’s commitment to International Humanitarian Law, with the Council specifically wishing to acknowledge the work of the Palestinian Red Crescent.

This year is particularly significant as it marks the 75^th anniversary of the adoption of the Geneva Conventions, to which the ICRC’s impartial, neutral and essential work is bound.

President of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Kate Forbes, will be visiting Sydney in November to receive the $50,000 Sydney Peace Prize at the award ceremony at Sydney Town Hall on Monday, 18 November where she will give the 2024 Sydney Peace Prize lecture. Later in the week she will be the guest of honour at our Gala Dinner on Thursday, 21 November at the Sheraton on the Park.

Don’t miss this Member Lecture to discuss insights into this years Sydney Peace Prize.

The Sydney Peace Foundation’s book Conversations in Peace Volume 2 of Sydney Peace Prize Lectures from 2012-2022 will be on sale for $25.

Biographies

Kate Miranda is the Director NSW at Australian Red Cross, Non-Executive Director, Adjunct Fellow at Macquarie University and UTS Business School. She specialises in corporate communications and organisational strategy and has more than 20 years’ experience in not-for-profit management, federal government advisory roles and media relations. Kate began her career as a journalist for the ABC.

Dr Jane Fulton, our Philanthropy Director at the Sydney Peace Foundation, spearheads our fundraising efforts. Following the completion of her PhD on environmental conflict at Sydney University, she worked with the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, the Foundation’s birthplace, before joining the UNDP in New York. She is dedicated to fostering resilient and inclusive communities, with a keen focus on the Sustainable Development Goals.

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The Gala Dinner is the Sydney Peace Foundation’s annual fundraising event. This memorable evening offers you and your guests an intimate opportunity to hear from inspiring speakers including the Asia Pacific Regional Director of the International Federation of Red Cross Societies, Alexander Matheou, Professor Emily Crawford, Vice President (Engagement) at the University of Sydney, Kirsten Andrews. The evening is hosted by Anton Enus.

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CEO and General Secretary of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Jagan Chapagain, will be in Sydney to accept the award at the Sydney Peace Prize Lecture and Award Ceremony at the Sydney Town Hall. Benjamin Law will be our host for the evening.

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If it’s possible to galvanise people starting with a hashtag, then so much more is possible, the Sydney Peace prize winner says

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The founder of the #MeToo movement says Australia’s defamation laws work to silence victims of sexual violence and misconduct, and she “absolutely” believes allegations of sexual assault made against President Donald Trump and US Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanagh.

Tarana Burke also says men who feel victimised by the movement need to empathise with women rather than complaining of the harm done to them.

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It’s been two years since #MeToo became part of the zeitgeist. There have been many stories, personal and in the media, that have motivated the public to confront workplace dynamics between men and women, consent, and the nature of sex itself. While these often-devastating narratives from survivors can inspire us into action or paralyze our senses, there is still much more work to be done.

Founder Tarana Burke remains determined to progress the movement. She speaks at colleges and universities across the country and is preparing the next generation of survivors to do the transformational work of healing.

Although Burke started the “Me Too” movement in 2006 to address rampant sexual violence, her advocacy work began when she part of youth leadership camps and sister circles as a teen; by her early twenties, she was leading her own. In her words, these healing circles were “a place to celebrate your joy and triumph” with other people who recognized that these stages are hard to reach. The catharsis comes not only from sharing one’s story of abuse, she said, but also what survival can look like after the trauma.

Over the years, she’s learned how to assess or reassess what healing looks like and the dangers of conversations that posit abusers at extreme polarities. There are different levels of severity when it comes to harm done, she says, and therefore we have to be mindful, sensitive, and adjust our judgment accordingly.

Burke talked to Vox over the phone about her humble beginnings, Me Too’s prominence and pitfalls, 2020 politics, and more. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Morgan Jerkins

I remember reading a profile of you in The Cut a year ago and you were talking about the archetypal story of an abuser. And I have talked about this with friends and others: It feels like when there’s a man who is outed as an abuser that they are immediately compared to Weinstein. “They’re not as bad as Weinstein” — as if, you know, because of that we can breathe a little easier. What is the danger of this framing of an archetypal story of Harvey Weinstein, for example, as “the most monstrous abuser there ever was”?

Tarana Burke

I’m grateful you asked this question because this is super dangerous, right? So I’ll give you an example. When the controversy happened around Joe Biden and it came up about him making Lucy Flores uncomfortable, she never called him a predator. She never even used the word “MeToo.” She talked about the situation and described how uncomfortable and powerless it made her. I felt it was important to support her and her coming out and her ability to say that.

But the backlash I got was that I was making a big deal out of it and Biden’s a good guy — “He’s no Harvey Weinstein.” My response to that was, first of all, I don’t dislike Joe Biden. I appreciate some of the things that he’s done over time to support women’s causes like sexual assault on college campuses and the Violence Against Women Act. Outside of Anita Hill, I think he’s been a quintessential good guy around these issues, right? My argument about that archetype is that if we go from zero to Harvey Weinstein — if someone like Joe Biden, who is by all intents and purposes a “good guy” — if I can’t tell the guy who talks about sexual harassment, the statistics on sexual violence, and who fights for women’s rights, that I’m uncomfortable with his behavior, how am I supposed to fight a Harvey Weinstein? You don’t have to be a Harvey Weinstein in order to make someone uncomfortable and wield your power in ways that make one feel powerless.

That archetype is dangerous because it creates this dynamic of a boogeyman — that sexual violence is created by a “bad guy” or a “bad apple” and that the everyday average Joe who makes you feel uncomfortable is above reproach. These polarizing dynamics don’t create the space for someone to be like, “Listen, I know that you mean well but I don’t like when you touch me like that.”

Morgan Jerkins

You also mentioned that you never wanted the Me Too conversation to be a take-down. I thought that that was surprising because I feel like, with me, being a millennial and someone who’s on the internet an awful lot, when someone is outed as an alleged abuser, the next thing is to want to take this person down. I’m afraid to even ask what restorative justice looks like.

Tarana Burke

This, again, is about the hyper-polars, right? Sexual violence happens on a spectrum — everything from someone making you uncomfortable to an environment is unworkable or unlivable to actual physical violence — because that is the truth, then accountability has to happen on a spectrum. We have a long way to go before we have a clear-cut, straightforward response to what restorative justice looks like, but we won’t ever get there if we declare that every time someone gets called out for their actions it’s a “witch hunt.” And, we also won’t get there if the standard is regardless of what they do, we get rid of them.

Morgan Jerkins

In your TED Talk, you talked about how sexual violence often happens when people believe that bodily autonomy is not a basic human right. I thought about that in the context of black girls and women — we have a legacy in this country and abroad where it wasn’t a basic human right for us. And so I think that there are many of us who are still grappling with that and that trauma should never be normalized. Meanwhile, in the media, so much of Me Too is tied to white women. What do you think is missing?

Tarana Burke

I’m going to take my time with this. On the one hand, I think that the lack of representation of black women and women of color or any marginalized group in the media since Me Too has gone viral has been clear and gross. It’s been very difficult to have our stories told. But nothing about that surprises me. This is the reality that black women and girls have been living with our whole lives. It’s a dual argument. We have to be vigilant that we are represented in these conversations and stories in mainstream media, whatever that looks like.

But I also don’t want us to get caught up in white folks validating our pain in their media. Like, for example, there was a huge push for us to talk about R. Kelly, and rightfully so. But some of those same folks who yell and scream about R. Kelly are still going to call black girls “fast” and ignore issues in our community. We cannot sacrifice the work that has to be done in our community to stop sexual violence for the sake of some representation so that white folks can be like, “You know what? Black people also suffer from this.” They know. They’ve never prioritized our trauma unless it was to their benefit. And so while we have to make sure that we keep that chorus going with, “Don’t forget about us,” we have to also make sure in tandem that we are being just as serious about the work that has to happen in our communities.

Morgan Jerkins

You said you’re going to start doing your healing circles again in 2020. Are there any components that you’re going to tinker with or add, given Me Too and its prominence?

Tarana Burke

That’s what we’re actually working through now. What does it look like to scale up something that’s so deeply personal? We’re working with a team of professional therapists and social workers and folks who do this. My main concern is being able to vet the people who come to the training to make sure that they are not causing any harm or retraumatizing people. When I was doing healing circles in the community, I was leading them myself. But now, obviously, I can’t do that around the country.

I also look at our healing circles as recruitment ground where survivors can move into our survivor leadership training. Another part of their healing can be doing the work of fighting against sexual violence. Those two things are tied together in our programming. That’s not necessarily new, but it’s certainly a bigger part of how we’re approaching the work now.

Morgan Jerkins

Besides the healing circles, what else do you have on your plate?

Tarana Burke

One of the things that we’re building is a digital platform. In 2020, we’ll debut that. Since I’ve been doing the work, it’s been a goal of mine to create a space where all different kinds of survivors can find themselves. By that, I mean race, ethnicity, and religion, but also by whatever stage of healing that you’re in. A lot of what’s offered in public service to survivors is for immediate health crisis intervention. We want to help survivors wherever they are in their healing journey.

But we also want to push people into action. Part of the work of the digital platform is a tool to be active in the movement. We’re also excited about the election. We’re waiting on a candidate to tackle what has been one of the largest news stories in the last decade. Nineteen million people tweeted about Me Too in the first year after it went viral.

We are looking at something that in any other field would be classified as a public health crisis and yet we haven’t had a question even asked in any of the debates about this topic. We are interested in where sexual violence falls in the spectrum of things that candidates are prioritizing.

Morgan Jerkins is the senior editor at ZORA and the author of This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America.

Miranda Barnes is a Caribbean American photographer. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

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Women’s bodies are being politicised again in countries where the debate over women’s bodily autonomy should have been concluded decades ago, says Katrin Jakobsdottir

Women are losing control of their own bodies as “aggressive nationalism” sweeps the world, Iceland’s prime minister said on Tuesday, opening the first international #MeToo conference.

Katrin Jakobsdottir, Iceland’s second female prime minister, kicked off the three-day summit, whose 80-plus speakers will brainstorm ways to end sexism, harassment and violence against women, on the eve of the #MeToo movement’s second anniversary.

“Women’s bodies are being politicised again and anew in countries where the debate over women’s reproductive rights and bodily autonomy should have been concluded decades ago,” said Jakobsdottir, whose Left-Green Movement took power in 2017.

“This hostile political climate is characterised by a return to aggressive nationalism and a systematic undermining of universal human rights … And when human rights are undermined, women and minorities are first in the firing line.”

The #MeToo campaign spread across social media in October 2017 as about 70 women came forward with allegations against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein in a scandal that sparked a global debate over sexual abuse and harassment.

Weinstein, 67, who has denied the allegations and said any sexual encounters were consensual, is set to face a trial in January for rape and predatory sexual assault. He could face a life sentence if convicted.

The #MeToo conference on the Nordic island of 340,000 people will largely focus on the region, but will also take in the movement’s global impact and aims to identify common solutions.

Though Jakobsdottir did not specify which countries she was referring to in her speech, the United States has seen a growing battle over reproductive rights after a number of states passed laws aiming to heavily restrict access to abortions.

Veteran U.S. civil rights activist Angela Davis, who spoke at the 2017 Women’s March on Washington to protest the start of Donald Trump’s presidency, will deliver a keynote speech.

Another U.S. feminist pioneer, Cythnia Enloe, will speak on the backlash against #MeToo by the “radical right”, linking recent restrictions on women’s reproductive rights to #MeToo.

Other topics under debate include whether the movement has changed understanding of the meaning of consent, how to deliver justice for survivors and the experiences of marginalised groups such as ethnic minorities and the disabled.

Me Too led to scrutiny of laws and prompted shake-ups of cultures at many workplaces but also drew criticisms, with some warning it is leading women to be locked out of business opportunities by men wary of being accused of misconduct.

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A 12-year-old Indigenous boy from Australia’s Northern Territory is believed to be the youngest to address the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva.

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Starting with two words, ‘me too’, women around the world have united in solidarity to share personal experiences about sexual harassment. This global call for change – the Me Too movement – has played a game-changing role in destigmatising the experiences of survivors of sexual assault and harassment, and, indeed, has re-imagined a future free from pervasive sexual violence. In recognition of its impact, the movement will be awarded the 2019 Sydney Peace Prize, with Tarana Burke and Tracey Spicer accepting the Prize on behalf of Me Too. The 2019 Sydney Peace Prize Jury citation reads:

“For empowering survivors of sexual harassment and violence, and elevating their voices; for championing truth and justice; for highlighting the breadth and impact of sexual violence worldwide; and for launching a demand for change that is sweeping the world.”

Founder Tarana Burke began building the movement in 2006 in the United States to support survivors of sexual violence, particularly black women and girls, connect to resources for healing, and to build a survivor-led community of advocates against sexual assault. Her grassroots work has now expanded to reach a global community of survivors from all walks of life.

Me Too is a movement about the far-reaching power of empathy. It’s about the millions of people who have raised their hands to say ‘me too’. And their hands are still raised..

Tracey Spicer AM is a journalist, author and broadcaster who has spearheaded the Me Too movement in Australia. She has produced award-winning investigations into sexual harassment in workplaces and founded NOW Australia in 2018 to advocate for safe workplaces and to support those who have been sexually harassed at work.

A demand for change sweeping the world

Contrary to popular belief, the Me Too movement did not spontaneously burst into existence, spurred by allegations from Hollywood actresses against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein. While much of the mainstream media coverage of Me Too has centred around the entertainment industry and the downfall of powerful perpetrators, Tarana Burke is quick to bring the focus back to where it belongs – to the survivors.

“Me Too is a movement about the far-reaching power of empathy. It’s about the millions of people who have raised their hands to say ‘me too’. And their hands are still raised.”

In recounting the first sparks of Me Too, Tarana recalled her deep despair at witnessing rampant sexual assault in her community. Laying on the bed in her one-bedroom apartment in early 2006, Tarana pulled out a piece of paper and scrawled ‘me too’ across the top of the paper. But she didn’t stop there. Below ‘me too’, she began to build an action plan for a movement based on empathy between survivors that would allow the healing of deep wounds. From the idea of empowerment through empathy, Tarana built Just Be Inc., a not-for-profit and network with a mission to support and amplify the voices of survivors of sexual abuse, assault, and exploitation.

On our own shores, Australian broadcaster, journalist and author Tracey Spicer has been spearheading the Me Too movement, speaking out about prevalent sexual abuse and harassment in the workplace and seeking to build a support network for survivors. The spark which truly ignited the Me Too movement in Australia was a tweet from Tracey in 2017 to her 57,000 followings asking people to “contact me privately to tell your stories.” The tweet received more than 2,000 responses and propelled Me Too into the Australian public conscious and discourse. Following a flood of responses and harrowing stories from survivors, Tracey set up NOW Australia to support people across all industries who have been sexually harassed, assaulted or intimidated at work.

Commending Tarana for starting the movement, Tracey spoke of her optimism for a better future. “The Me Too movement has changed everything, it gives women a support base and information with which they can speak out and tell their stories.”

In our own backyard

The Me Too movement has kickstarted an outpouring of individual and collective voices shining a spotlight on the universal experience of women and some men with sexual harassment and abuse. And Australian society is unfortunately no exception. Statistics show that 1 in 5 Australian women will experience sexual violence in her lifetime, and that 1 in 2 will be subjected to sexual harassment. And these statistics only become more severe for indigenous women and women living with a disability. It is clear that we continue to have a very serious problem with attitudes towards domestic violence, consent, sexual abuse, and harassment.

The Me Too movement has revealed holes in our cultural norms and legal structures which must be addressed to better serve our communities and promote progress. Australian Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins announced in 2018 an Australian Human Rights Commission-led National Inquiry into Sexual Harassment in the Workplace. ‘Me Too has given us reason to be hopeful,’ says Jenkins.

Julian Burnside AO QC, 2014 Sydney Peace Prize Laureate, strongly supported Jury’s choice:

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The young activists’ aspirations – to assemble peacefully, to speak freely, to not be persecuted – are a universal cause.

Why do the Hong Kong activists matter to us? Because their cause is universal. Aerial images of vast crowds flooding the streets of the skyscraper-studded island are of course riveting. Equally fascinating is that, with China fast emerging as a global behemoth and surveillance state, this crisis serves as a barometer of what we might next expect of it and its president-cum-new-emperor, Xi Jinping.

There’s also an astounding element of David versus Goliath in Hong Kong, something that awakens a deep instinct in us, a yearning to see bravery and determination in the face of great odds: young people defying a giant and leveraging surprising tactics in their struggle.

As coincidence has it, this is all happening shortly after we’ve marked the anniversary of Tiananmen, and rewatched the footage of that man single-handedly stopping a column of tanks in June 1989 – an act of courage that remains a blockbuster. In Britain, there is of course particular interest in Hong Kong because of the colonial past, the 1997 handover, and responsibilities attached to it: the question of whether China will renege on its commitment to “two systems” looms large.

When the activist Joshua Wong was released this week, his first words were about “fundamental rights and freedom”. He didn’t mention sovereignty, nor ethnicity, nor religious or cultural identity. As such, Hong Kong’s activists serve as a reminder of universal principles that we have become almost numb to in the age of suspicion, conspiracy theories, fake news, moral relativism and identity politics. We’ve become accustomed to thinking about rights from the perspective of a specific group, whatever its characteristics; but here are rights being fought for in universal terms: “fundamental” was the key word.

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights”, and all are entitled to those rights and freedoms “without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.”.

This points to what was enshrined in the international charters drawn up in the aftermath of the second world war, when a global liberal order was tentatively put in place. As the 1948 UN-adopted Universal Declaration of Human Rights puts it: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights”, and all are entitled to those rights and freedoms “without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.”

We’re stunned by the images of Hong Kong not just because of the scale of these events or their historical dimension, but also because they somehow shake us out of a lethargy. Had we not become blase or cynical or fatalistic about the chances of defending human rights? Had we not started flirting with the notion that some principles might work fine for our western world but can hardly be considered as imperatives for others? Would that be because of our own imperfect record, our past empires, our “wars of choice”, our western desolation in times of Donald Trump, Brexit, the far-right in Europe, arms sales to Saudi, you name it? Or might it be because some of the nihilism on social media has blunted us? Hong Kong is a brilliant, festive wake-up call, but with an attached worry: can those young people prevail?

Hong Kong rose up on its own. Just like Algerians did earlier this year. Just like the Sudanese protesters, crushed in Khartoum. What does that tell us, if not that we in the west, or our governments, are hardly the puppet masters that some claim they are? In fact, when you think of it, isn’t it rather contemptuous, if not racist, to hold the knee-jerk belief that distant peoples only rise up when some kind of American neo-imperial plan is lurking in the background? And can we decently claim we risk “imposing” norms on others when – loud and clear on our screens – thousands are in fact seeking our attention and support?

Hong Kong rose up against an extradition law that threatens to place any citizen there at the mercy of China’s autocratic system. What the demonstrators have marched for is driven by homegrown aspirations, not some foreign-concocted challenge to the Chinese regime. What motivates Hong Kong’s population relates to basic human dignity – something that’s borderless and found in each individual, not a product of western encroachment.

Another thing is striking: in an era of rampant nationalism, Hong Kong stands out as the absolute anti-nationalist protest for essential, individual rights. How indeed could this possibly be a nationalistic movement, when one same nation lives on the island and on the mainland? When you saw those images, perhaps you thought back to other momentous civil resistance struggles, born of local realities but universalist in their message: Martin Luther King and the US civil rights movement, the eastern European 1989 revolutions that brought the iron curtain down, and the anonymous heroes of the 2009 Green movement in Iran(10 years ago this month).

Hong Kong’s activists stand for something vital for us all: the right of the individual not to be persecuted or extradited to a dictatorship, the right to assemble without incurring prison, the right to speak freely, to enjoy freedom of information.”.

What I can’t help thinking about is Syria, a place where the struggle for fundamental rights met a tragic fate: the dreams of those who in the spring of 2011 poured out on to the streets asking for the end of a 40-year dictatorship. Hong Kong may seem far away from Syria, but the hopes of those people on the island aren’t much different from those of Syrian families who, for months, demonstrated peacefully each Friday with slogans such as “We want freedom”, “Dignity” and “Your silence is killing us” (words addressed to us). It’s now commonplace to depict Syria as an ethnic conflict between communities at each other’s throats, and to be sure, that has sadly become part of the picture after eight long years of war.

But in the early stages of the Syrian revolution, people stood up as one, no matter their origin or background, against a tyrant. Forgetting that very pertinent fact, or denying it, plays to this day into the hands of a regime that practises mass repression, ethnic cleansing and collective punishment – not unlike the Chinese authorities against some of its minorities. Hong Kong is ethnically Chinese but politically different from China (as is Taiwan). Against that backdrop, the events there do much to debunk the notion that cultural relativism can be an excuse to deprive people of fundamental rights.

This may seem obvious, but from Putin’s Russia to Sisi’s Egypt, and even in Europe with the likes of Viktor Orbán in Hungary and Jarosław Kaczyński in Poland dismantling the democratic rule of law, the argument is constantly made that “traditional values” or specific national contexts make it undesirable, or impossible, to abide by internationally agreed standards that protect individual rights. If China’s rulers have their way in Hong Kong, there’s little doubt they will deploy that same line as a fig leaf for oppression.

Hong Kong’s activists stand for something vital for us all: the right of the individual not to be persecuted or extradited to a dictatorship, the right to assemble without incurring prison, the right to speak freely, to enjoy freedom of information. If we are truly internationalists or anti-nationalists, now is the time to embrace all those seemingly distant struggles as our own, and without distinction, without selective or variable indignation. Not because it suits our political agenda or our interests, but – yes, let’s say it – in human solidarity. Universalism is not a dirty word, it is beautiful.

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#MeToo movement founder Tarana Burke and advocate of the Australian anti-harassment drive Tracey Spicer have been awarded the Sydney Peace Prize.

Founder of the global #MeToo movement Tarana Burke and one of the leading faces of the Australian movement, Tracey Spicer, have been jointly awarded the Sydney Peace Prize for their revolutionary work in the #MeToo movement.

The two activists have received the award for their work in revealing and protesting against sexual harassment, particularly the widespread 2017 investigations into sexual harassment in the media industry.

Ms Burke started the movement in 2006 when she developed a grassroots network to help survivors of sexual assault, particularly black women and girls.

The movement aimed to connect sexual assault survivors to resources for healing and to advocate against sexual violence.

Ms Burke said that receiving the peace prize highlights the prevalence of sexual violence and strengthens belief that the issue can be eradicated.

The #MeToo movement will continue this work until we shift the culture to one that believes that every person, no matter their identity or circumstance, has the right to consent and safety.

Ms Spicer greatly contributed to revealing sexual harassment in the Australian media industry, through work investigating multiple allegations of sexual harassment and bullying by Australian TV personality Don Burke.

Ms Spicer expressed her “tremendous honour” in accepting the Sydney Peace Prize alongside Ms Burke.

“This movement shows that solidarity is the key to creating lasting change,” Ms Spicer said. “It’s time for Government, business and the community to help those who need it most.”

“I dedicate this prize to everyone who is a survivor of sexual violence: your voices are being heard.”

Ms Spicer has been listening to the stories of thousands of sexual harassment and violence survivors over the past 18 months.

“It’s humbling to be entrusted with their stories, especially when being shared for the first time,” Ms Spicer told Guardian Australia.

Sexual harassment is not only about sex; it’s predominantly about power … the recounting of these stories, and the work undertaken to support the survivors, takes an enormous toll on everyone.

Ms Spicer also created Now Australia in 2018 to support survivors who have been sexually harassed, and to support the National Inquiry into Sexual Harassment being led by the Australian Human Rights Commission.

Since 2017, the #MeToo movement has become global after the hashtag went viral through its link to the  allegations of sexual harassment and violence against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein.

The allegations promoted a much bigger discourse revealing widespread sexual harassment and assault against women in a variety of industries.

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The Sydney Peace Foundation Chair, Archie Law, told SBS that the recipients were chosen for this award because of the movement’s ability to demonstrate how prominent the issue of sexual abuse and harassment is.

“(The award) was for #MeToo’s ability to support women through assistance, but also to stand up, raise their voices and disrupt the patterns of abuse and harassment that happen,” Mr Law said.

“It has also, I hope, caused a lot of men to reflect upon their actions and how they treat women, and understand what constitutes good and bad behaviour”.

The 2019 Sydney Peace Prize Jury’s citation praised the #MeToo movement for “empowering survivors of sexual harassment and violence … and for launching a demand for change that is sweeping the world”.

The two recipients will receive the award on 14 November at Sydney Town Hall where they will deliver the 2019 Sydney Peace Prize lecture.

Previous laureates of the Sydney Peace Prize include Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Mary Robinson, Noam Chomsky, Patrick Dodson, Naomi Klein and the Black Lives Matter Global Network.

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Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins has announced the MeToo Movement as the winner of the 2019 Sydney Peace Prize.

Ms Jenkins said the global movement, which has had local and international impact in its call to action on sexual assault and sexual harassment, was an incredibly deserving winner of the Peace Prize.

The calling of the world-first National Inquiry into Sexual Harassment in Australian workplaces, currently underway at the Australian Human Rights Commission is just one of the many initiatives prompted by MeToo.

“In my role as Sex Discrimination Commissioner, I am acutely aware of the statistics and stories of violence against women, at home, at work, on the streets and online,” Ms Jenkins said.

The MeToo Movement has been critical for our whole community to hear those stories and better understand the scale and impact of violence against women.

“The peaceful act of sharing stories of abuse and harassment and showing empathy for others who have experience this conduct, has created a monumental shift in action, moving mindsets from doubting the problem to focusing efforts on eliminating it.”

The Sydney Peace Prize will be formally accepted by Tarana Burke, the founder of the movement, and Tracey Spicer, journalist and advocate for addressing sexual harassment in Australia, in a ceremony at Sydney’s Town Hall in November.

“Recognising the importance of the MeToo Movement through this Prize will contribute to the continued momentum toward change,” Ms Jenkins said.

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