King Juan Carlos today awarded Spain's 2008 Human Rights Prize to the Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defense of Women's Rights (CLADEM) in a ceremony in which he spoke about the importance of erradicating domestic violence and of providing women with access to education and employment.

The Spanish monarch, accompanied by Queen Sofia, was speaking at the University of Alcalá de Henares, near Madrid, in this the third year the prize, that amounts to some 30,000 euros, has been awarded.

The biannual prize is designed to recognise the work being done by organisations to promote human rights and democratic values in Latin America.

In his speech, the King underlined the importance of improving women's living conditions and giving them their dignity, for which it was imperative to 'erradicate the domestic violence so many women suffer; erradicate poverty, hunger and disease and ensure their full access to education and employment'.

'I hope that this prize', he said, 'will go some way towards achieving a fairer life for all citizens of Latin America'.He added that rights and freedom are 'by their very definition a rejection of violence and zero-tolerance for the hateful curse of terrorism'.

According to the King, this prize recognises 'the sum of efforts being made in Latin American communities to establish fundamental rights and liberties, as well as a greater social and economic development'.

CLADEM, which was the unanimous choice of the jurors, is a non-profit making organisation operating in Latin America and the Caribbean, which coordinates an extensive network of regional organisations and individuals committed to defending these rights.

It was founded in 1987 in San José in Costa Rica, has its headquarters in Lima and currently operates in 17 different countries in the region.

CLADEM's coordinator, Norma Enriquez, who collected the prize on behalf of the organisation, thanked the jury for recognising the important work done by those who defend human rights, saying that they had often been branded 'enemies of the state for defending, demanding or denouncing infringements on people's human rights'. 

She added that the prize was a 'clear message of support for the work they were doing' and an 'impulse' to keep on working in the same direction.

Enriquez explained that one of the initial goals of CLADEM when it was founded twenty years ago was to achieve laws against domestic violence.  In less than ten years almost every Latin American country had one as a result.
 
According to Enriquez, CLADEM saw that is was necessary 'to change the law so  that its conception included a woman's perspective, making it clear what it meant to be a woman in a partiarchal society'.

However, 'convinced that equality in law does not necessary mean equality in life, we have tried to build public policies in order to achieve a cultural transformation,' she added..