Christopher Barnes (Chapultepec Award)

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Christopher Barnes
General Assembly of the IAPA
October 21, 2020
Chapultepec Award Presentation to Edison Lanza

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Today I have the honorable job to present the 2020 Chapultepec Grand Prize; the most important award that our organization has awarded for 22 years.

As you know, with this award IAPA honors persons who have made significant contributions to the principles highlighted in the Declaration of Chapultepec which this organization had the vision to create in March 1994 at the Castillo de Chapultepec in Mexico City.

Since that year, we have managed to transcend this Declaration and its principles, firmly embedding it as the center from which all good work of the organization eminates. We have had endless activities with, as we saw with the president of Panama this morning, more than 70 other government leaders from all over the Americas having signed it, committing to its principles on freedom of the press and expression.

We have also shared it in conferences with presidents of Supreme Courts and Congresses, with the idea that the three public powers of the State would see freedom of the press and expression as an indispensable north in the construction of democracies.

We have made it part of newsrooms, university classrooms and civil organizations, with the conviction that knowledge and application of its principles can help build better societies.

And, finally, we have used its existence to highlight the people and institutions that have worked to uplift, protect and promote its principles for the benefit of society, such as Arthur Sulzberger and José Miguel Vivanco, or the Inter-American Court of Human Rights as well as the World Bank to name a few.

We are today honored and proud that Dr. Edison Lanza joins this distinguished group of persons and institutions receiving this award. I now ask our president of the Chapultepec Subcommittee, Roberto Pombo, to introduce Dr. Edison Lanza.

Thank you very much

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