Syria Today | First Lady receives award

First Lady receives award

Syria’s First Lady Asma al-Assad received the Gold Medal of the President of the Italian Republic on October 19 in recognition of “her steadfast commitment towards inclusive economic growth and sustainable development in the Arab World”.

Mrs. Assad received the prize during the Pio Manzù International Conference in Rimini where she delivered a keynote speech on poverty, the conference’s central theme this year. “By now we live in a globalised world: we grow together, we suffer together, we are all connected,” the First Lady said after accepting the award from Italian President Giorgio Napolitano. “We must raise the poverty threshold so that nobody has to live in extreme poverty There are no more excuses, there is no more time.”

Describing poverty as “a disease” which is a root cause of war and terrorism, she said: “Terrorists, fundamentalists find in poverty a reservoir on which to hit, where to find followers… We need a coalition of consciousness, of justice, for humanity. This is the right moment to act.”

The Pio Manzù conference is a yearly event organised by the Pio Manzù International Research Centre, an international centre for research on geopolitical and environmental structures. Previous guests of honour include French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and microfinance expert Muhammad Yunus.