11/17/96
Chicago Tribune
by Constanza de Serna
Gloria Cuartas, mayor of Apartado, Colombia, has received the first UNESCO Mayors for Peace Award to recognize exemplary actions among municipal leaders worldwide.
Cuarta was selected "for her courageous work to combat social exclusion and promote community dialogue, peace and citizenship," Federico Mayor Zaragoza, UNICEF director-general, said during a ceremony in Rio de Janeiro.
Cuartas says she will use her $25,000 prize on behalf of Apartado.
Trained as a sociologist, Cuartas was elected mayor of Apartado in 1994. Since then she has worked towarad reversing 30 years of sectarian and drug-trafficking violence in her community in northwestern Colombia.
"This award means a lot not only for me, but also for the region of Uraba in recognizing the administrative and humanitarian tasks that we are all doing in the municipal team," said Cuartas. "We need to overcome the images of death to raise instead a voice of international solidarity for protecting life."