E.MA is awarded Honourable Mention in conjunction with the 2006 UNESCO Prize for HR Education

The Honourable Mention, as announced by The Director-General of UNESCO, Koïchiro Matsuura on 10 December 2006, is given to E.MA, as organised by EIUC, in view of the “high level education provided to its 750 graduates” and its success in “satisfy[ing] the need for competent human rights practitioners through the application of a multidisciplinary educational concept”. The UNESCO press release announcing the award also emphasizes that “the success of E.MA has served as an example for the creation of similar programmes elsewhere”.

The leading example of E.MA for the development of Regional Master’s Programmes in Human Rights and Democratization is also recognised by Prof. Christof Heyns, the Director of the Human Rights Centre in Pretoria, which has been awarded with the 2006 UNESCO Prize for Human Rights Education. In response to a letter of congratulation sent to him by the EIUC President, Prof. Horst Fischer, Prof. Heyns says: “the exceptional example you (E.MA/EIUC) set was our main inspiration in starting our programme - I can still recall very well how I read a brochure on your programme on the plane coming back to South Africa from a meeting with Professor Flauss (former E.MA Director), and realising this is exactly what we need in Africa, as well as our subsequent meetings in Venice. We would like to thank all of you for that, and like to say that we appreciate our link with you very much, and hope to develop our collaboration in pursuing our joint enterprise further, indeed as friends and partners”.

The EIUC President, together with the E.MA Chairperson, Prof. Manfred Nowak, express their gratitude to UNESCO on behalf of the member universities for the honourable mention received which witnesses, with the 10th anniversary from the institution of E.MA approaching, the uniqueness of the E.MA programme as laboratory for academic integration and as successful investment of the European Union in specialised human rights education and training.