Next Thursday the 2004 Sydney Peace Prize will be awarded to the Indian writer and human rights campaigner Arundhati Roy. This decision has been greeted with expressions of affection for Roy and gratitude to her for campaigning about abuses of power wherever they occur. She has also been criticised for her alleged anti-American stance and the Sydney Peace Foundation has been ridiculed for choosing her.

So why was she awarded the peace prize? Over three months each year, the Sydney Peace Prize jury (of which I am a member) - comprising seven individuals who represent corporate, media, academic and community sector interests - assesses the merits of the nominees' efforts to promote peace with justice.

The distinction between peace - an end to violence - and peace with justice is important. An easy way to illustrate the distinction is to refer to the 1919 Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I. The guns stopped firing. The victors were rewarded. The vanquished were punished. The peace with justice agenda - people's needs for jobs and income, for housing and education, for dignity and civil liberties - was ignored. Another world war was almost inevitable.

The citation of the Sydney Peace Prize to Roy reads: "In recognition of her courage in campaigning for human rights and for advocacy of non-violence as in her demands for justice for the poor, for the victims of communal violence (in India), for the millions displaced by the Narmada dam projects and for her opposition to nuclear weapons."

Roy is controversial. To advocate peace with justice you have to be partisan on social and political issues. This week, Gerard Henderson suggested on this page that her support for the Iraqi resistance should disqualify her from being awarded the prize. What this fails to recognise, however, is that resistance is seldom violent.

In a world dominated by the cultural and military paraphernalia of a war on terrorism Roy inspires many who would otherwise feel disempowered. As part of this war we are being asked to suspend our abilities to analyse and criticise. We are being invited to collude with that oversimplified view of being for or against Western (US) government ways of behaving. We are being asked to tolerate the erosion of civil liberties. Someone who unmasks the sources, the uses and the abuses of power - as in her recent books War Talk, The Cost of Living, The Algebra of Infinite Justice, The Chequebook and the Cruise Missile - is painting a vision of justice and showing how it might be achieved.

Prizes have a purpose. They are given for impressive performances in a particular field and to express certain values. The owner and trainer of the horse that wins the Melbourne Cup will be feted and rewarded. Millions of viewers are enjoying the TV spectacle of trying to find an Australian singing idol. Functions are held to identify the businessman or businesswoman of the year.

Rewards for sporting performances, not just the well known AFL Brownlow Medal and Dally M Award for rugby league, continue throughout a year's crowded sporting calendar. Few would decry the value of these awards or the excitement and pleasure which they generate.

The initiators of the Sydney Peace Prize aimed to influence public interest in peace with justice, an ideal which is often perceived as controversial. The choice of a non-controversial candidate for a peace prize would be a safe option but unlikely to prompt debate or to increase understanding. Consensus usually encourages compliance, often anaesthetises and seldom informs.

The Sydney Peace Foundation exists not only to award the Sydney Peace Prize. It organises peace education events such as seminars on peace in the workplace and the recent address by the former foreign minister Gareth Evans on state sovereignty and humanitarian intervention.

The foundation also provides employment in areas of human rights education and research. It contributes to scholarships for students from developing countries who come to Sydney to study peace, including non-violent conflict resolution, the attainment of human rights and the mandates of the United Nations.

Influenced by the example of peace prize recipients such as Roy, such young people leave Australia with greater understanding and a sense of hope. Their activism and commitment, their writing and campaigning may one day earn them a peace prize.

In common with the distinguished Roy, they might even come back to Sydney to receive it.

Stuart Rees is the director of the Sydney Peace Foundation.

© 2004 Sydney Morning Herald

###