The 2024 Aegis Award has gone to three remarkable Central African faith leaders, Cardinal Dieudonné Nzapalainga, Apostle Nicolas Guérékoyame-Gbangou and Imam Omar Kobine Layama (Imam Layama receives the award posthumously, having passed away in November 2020).
The Aegis Award recognises humanitarian actions that went beyond the call of duty and attempted to save people threatened by war, persecution or genocide, intervening in exemplary ways to change circumstances to save human life. Previous recipients include Lt Gen Romeo Dallaire, UN Force Commander in Rwanda during the Genocide against the Tutsi, and Ambassador Kenneth Quinn, who helped eradicate the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.
The Award was presented on 28 July in Kigali during the Aegis Trust’s ‘Listening & Leading’ conference by Alice Wairimu Nderitu, UN Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide; Rev Dr Emma Jordan-Simpson, Auburn Seminary, and Dr Giavana Jones, Templeton Religion Trust. Present to receive it were Apostle Nicolas Guérékoyame-Gbangou; Bishop Justin Ndema on behalf of Cardinal Nzapalainga, who was meeting the Pope in the Vatican the same day; Imam Layama’s widow, Célestine Katizatou Titoua, and also his successor, Imam Abdoulaye Ousselenge.
The 2024 Aegis Award recognises the exceptional courage and leadership of this year’s recipients in risking their lives to share a public platform and demonstrate interfaith unity, bringing their followers together against sectarian violence between Muslims and Christians during the crisis of 2013-14 following the Seleka take-over of the Central African Republic.
Invited in 2014 to visit Rwanda by Rwandan faith leaders and the Aegis Trust, the Central African faith leaders subsequently asked Aegis to work with them to build peace in CAR, and a team of educators from the Kigali Genocide Memorial did just that.
“These faith leaders are the ones who stood up, who said no to violence, who urged the two communities to stop attacking one another. It was very risky to their lives,” commented Freddy Mutanguha, CEO of the Aegis Trust and Director of the Kigali Genocide Memorial. “The journey is still long, people are still armed in their hearts, but these leaders travelled around the country calling for peace, they did it from their hearts, and they managed to contain the violence.”
“With these awardees, Aegis has reminded the world not only of the crisis which has been engulfing the Central African Republic for a decade, but also of the role specific individuals have played to bring peace and unity back to this country, even at great personal risk,” commented UN Special Advisor Alice Nderitu in presenting the Award. “In the darkest hours of a nation torn apart by conflict, when fear and hatred threatened to consume everything, these leaders emerged as beacons of hope.”
“The actions of these faith leaders is so rare,” commented Aegis Trust Founder Dr James Smith. “When we look at the world today, how polarised and divided it is, that these three men came together in total unity to stop this atrocity needs to be celebrated. Tens of thousands of people are alive today because of their actions.”
