The prize is awarded by “Travel for peace”, a travel agency with ideology that wants to contribute to peace making processes through cultural understanding and respect for humanity. Travel for peace has human rights as a basis and is independent of any political ideology, economic interest or religion. The price is named after Blanche Major who lost 31 members of her family in one day in Auschwitz. Only her sister and herself survived. Despite the horrible sufferings Blanche has always had a redeeming attitude and has close German friends. She has actively shown young people how important reconciliation and forgiveness are, and her dream is a reconciliation between Israel and Palestine. The prize is to be awarded to persons or organizations that work actively for reconciliation. This years’ prize winner is Enver Djuliman from the Norwegian Helsinki Committee. He will receive the prize at the University of Oslo, Blindern, Monday 4th of August 2003.

Enver Djuliman was born in 1959 and came to Norway with his family as a refugee in 1993, due to the war in his home-country Bosnia-Hercegovina. War, conflicts, ethnic discrimination, terrible agressions and around 250.000 dead, was to determine his future life and carrier in Norway. He has always been concerned about how to avoid transmission of the pasts evil heritage to new generations and this is to him the key to reconciliation. Mr Djuliman, who is a lawyer, was engaged in the Norwegian Helsinki Committee in Oslo in 1997, and initiated many new projects. Among others the “Kosovo-project”, the “Bosnia-project”and the “Drammen-project” which included information- and educational activities for refugees from Bosnia and Kosovo, as well as human rights schools for young norwegians and refugees. In 2001 his book ” The difficult reconciliation” was published in serbian, bosnian and croatian languages. The book contains articles about reconciliation processes in different parts of the world f.i in South Africa, United States, Palestina and Norway. It discusses reconciliation on all levels of society and accounts for the different means that can be used in a reconciliatioin process. In connection with the publication there were organized six bigger conferences on reconciliation in Croatia, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Serbia and Montenegro. The large media coverage and attention around it in the society in general shows that the book fills a hole in professional litterature on the problems. It also shows how necessary and important it is to grab a hold of the problem and put it on the international agenda. The przce goes out to a man in the middle of life to thank him for and encourage him to keep up the good work.