Hamburg Citizens' Prize (2006)

This was his best birthday present ever: on his 72nd birthday, Hamburg's First Mayor Ole von Beust presented him with the CDU's Hamburg Citizens' Award in front of 500 guests in the main ballroom of the town hall. The prize, endowed with 2000 euros, is considered to be particularly prestigious. It was awarded to Rüdiger Nehberg together with Annette Weber for their campaigns to strengthen human rights worldwide, in particular for their tireless efforts against female genital mutilation. The cooperation with Islam was particularly recognized.


With TARGET, he achieved a breakthrough on November 23, 2006 in Cairo's Al-Azhar, the spiritual center of Sunni Islam: At the conference initiated by TARGET, the highest Islamic legal scholars outlawed female genital mutilation as a punishable crime that violates the highest values of Islam. This decision under the patronage of the Grand Mufti of Egypt, Prof. Dr. Gom'a, is unique in religious history. Laudator Prof. Dr. Imeyer, Chairman of the independent Citizens' Prize jury: "Not even the UN or UNICEF have managed this. Such phenomena sometimes require the initiative of individuals."

"The decision," says Nehberg, "must now be disseminated throughout the world." It is to be passed on to the highest religious leaders of the 35 countries in which this custom is practiced at a conference in Mali in August. "Our patron has promised to open the conference and to swear his colleagues in on his fatwa, the legal opinion." Each of the millions of mosques in the affected areas will then receive a valuable leather booklet with the fatwa and the requirement to proclaim its contents during Friday prayers. "If you consider that with just €3, the cost of a booklet, you can save the girls of an entire village from this terrible fate, then it should be possible to raise such a utopian sum."

Gerd-Winand Imeyer on the standing ovation, which seems to confirm Nehberg's plans: "This is a first in the 25-year history of our prize and shows that we made the right decision with our choice." Nehberg concludes: "I have not earned this prize alone. I will share it with the three people without whom this success would never have been possible. They are the Grand Mufti Prof. Dr. Ali Gom'a, the Egyptian Minister Prof. Dr. Zakzouk and my life partner Annette Weber. That may sound selfless, but it is very selfish. Because joy shared is joy quadrupled."

If the Mali conference brings the hoped-for success, Nehberg wants the Grand Mufti to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. "His involvement is the most important prerequisite for ending the biggest 'civil war' of all time, in which 8,000 girls fall victim every day."