The Silvana Arbia Foundation was officially founded in San Marino in November 2014, at the wish of the magistrate Silvana Arbia who worked until 2008 as Chief Prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (I.C.T.R.) based in The Hague.
In 2013, Soroptimist International of Europe awarded its Peace Prize to Silvana Arbia for the magnificent work she accomplished in Africa, based on the candidacy presented by the Soroptimist Club of San Marino (R.S.M.).
This Peace Prize worth Euro 20,000 became the first building block of the Silvana Arbia Foundation, which intends to invest in the future of women and children in the African Great Lakes Region.
Silvana Arbia (2nd left) receives the SIE Peace Prize at the Governors’ Meeting in Berlin, 2013. The prize is presented by the Rwandan delegation (Françoise Murebwayire and Liberathe Irambona), Ulla Madsen (SIE President Elect at the time) and Kathy Kaaf (SIE President at the time).
Over the past ten years this region has been the theatre of bloody wars in which several million people have lost their lives, and hundreds of thousands have become refugees and/or dispersed.
Warriors and terrorists continue to fight using minors – often not only for fighting but for sexual exploitation. This phenomenon is widespread and perverse, and no one seems able to stop it.
The Silvana Arbia Foundation aims to help prevent and reduce the practice of recruiting minors aged less than fifteen, thanks to awareness and prevention campaigns and in particular to information and education activities addressed primarily to women and mothers who are close to the young boys and girls, in order to protect them from abduction, coercion and the risk of involvement in military operations.
To carry out its activities the Foundation needs the support of many, above all that of women who are sensitive to the problem and available to join in the actions that are essential for Peace.
With your help the Foundation will be able to implement its strategic plan to develop the role of women in achieving peace and preventing conflicts, a plan that has two specific focuses:
- educating women and young girls
- raising awareness at the local, national and international levels.
To this effect, a small booklet entitled L’ARBRE DES DROITS (THE TREE OF RIGHTS), published by Aurora Cherubini and Itala Cenci, members of the Foundation and of the Soroptimist Club of San Marino, will be distributed:
to teachers and parents, so that despite the daily difficulties, they learn how to give an education to children, an example that will be able to « infect others ».
- to those who proclaim each human being’s right to respect.
- to those who can look at the world « with the eyes of children ».
This booklet is intended for boys and girls so that thanks to an education based on experiences, relations, objects, emotions, resentments and anger they can identify their place in the world in a particular way.
Thanks to your aid, we will be able to carry out this urgent and essential action in favour of Peace in the Great Lakes Region.
THANK YOU!
Silvana Arbia Foundation
The President: Marie Jeanne Bosia
San Marino, January 2019
If you would like to help the Silvana Arbia Foundation, please send your contributions to:
BANCA AGRICOLA COMMERCIALE-DOGANA (RSM)
IBAN: SM 08 B 03034 09800 000060166843-
COD. SWIFT: BASMSMSMXXX
Fondazione Silvana Arbia
c/o Baredi Alba–Viale degli Ulivi,47- 47899 SERRAVALLE –(RSM)
Info@arbia.foundation
 |