DPU's Dr Zeremariam Fre wins 2018 Desmond Tutu Reconciliation award

The Fellowship, which this year focuses on environmental care, promotes reconciliation by bringing global support to individuals engaged in local projects.  It recognises Zeremariam’s lifetime work supporting pastoral peoples, advocating for their rights to land and care of the natural resources that support them.

For over 30 years, Zeremariam has made a significant contribution to securing the rights of pastoralist and agro-pastoralist communities, promoting sustainable development and environmental care and conserving and sharing indigenous knowledge. In 1989, he founded the Pastoral and Environmental Network in the Horn of Africa (PENHA), an African-led international NGO respected for fostering cooperation in a region that has been beset with unrest and insecurity.

Dr. Zeremariam Fre has been a passionate and committed spokesperson for marginalised pastoralists in Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somaliland, Sudan and Uganda, facilitating knowledge sharing and cooperation across communities and borders. He has fostered an understanding of pastoralism as an economically rational and environmentally sound way of living, and of pastoralists as effective custodians of the environment on which they rely.

Announcing the award, Fellowship Chairman Dr Charles Lane said Dr Fre had sought local and community-led solutions to environmental and livelihood challenges which can be replicated, adapted and shared. His approach to pastoral development focuses on environmental sustainability and is shaped by a commitment to regionalism, reconciliation, and grass-roots action.