World News | Barbados PM Mottley to Deliver Annual Mandela Lecture in South Africa

Johannesburg, Jul 2 (PTI) Mia Mottley, the first woman Prime Minister of Barbados, who was recently accorded by the UN for her work on raising awareness on climate change, will deliver the prestigious Nelson Mandela Lecture this year, the Nelson Mandela Foundation (NMF) has said.

The Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture is a platform to drive debate on significant social issues.

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It encourages the public, both locally and internationally, to enter into a dialogue, often about social issues faced by society globally.

In 2021, Motley was crowned a Champion of the Earth by the United Nations Environment Programme for her work raising awareness of the crisis that climate change poses to developing countries.

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"Her Excellency Mia Mottley was recently crowned a Champion of the Earth by the United Nations Environmental Programme for her incredible work in raising the alarm on the crisis climate change poses on vulnerable Developing States," Sello Hatang, CEO of the NMF said on Friday.

Motley, 56, follows in the footsteps of former ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and former US President Barack Obama, who have delivered the prestigious lecture in the past.

“The theme for the 20th Lecture will explore issues of climate change and food insecurity, underpinned by our social bonding praxis,” NMF said in a statement.

This 20th edition of the annual event will be hosted in the coastal city of Durban in November. The exact date and venue for the lecture will be announced later, it said.

This year's event was to show solidarity with the people of KwaZulu-Natal and neighbouring Eastern Cape Provinces, who have suffered a year of devastating rioting, inter-communal violence and flooding that has left thousands of people homeless, the NMF said.

The lecture is held every year in memory of Nelson Mandela, the internationally-respected first democratically elected president of South Africa after decades of apartheid-era minority white rule.

Mandela spent 27 years as a political prisoner before leading the country to freedom.

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