Meet The 4 Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation (RMAF) 2022 Awardees: Bernadette Madrid, Sotheara Chhim, and More

The Board of Trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation (RMAF) revealed that this year, four individuals from Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan, and the Philippines. Read on to know more about them

The Ramon Magsaysay Awards Foundation (RMAF), which is widely regarded as the "Nobel Peace Prize of Asia," recently announced this year's awardees in a global announcement ceremony held last 31 August 2022. Among the winners are Cambodian mental health advocate Sotheara Chhim, Japanese sight-saving humanitarian Tadashi Hattori, Indonesian anti-plastic pollution warrior Gary Bencheghib, and the Philippines' very own children's rights crusader Bernadette Madrid.

In case you missed it: The 64th Ramon Magsaysay Awards Season Commences

In a statement, RMAF President Susanna Afan expressed her respect for the four awardees. "Similar to the Magsaysay Laureates before them, the 2022 Ramon Magsaysay Awardees have shown moral courage and impassioned insistence on making the societies that they serve better, kinder and more equitable for everyone, especially for the marginalised," said Afan.

"Indeed, they offer us inspiring examples of vision, leadership, empathy, persistence, and greatness of spirit," the President added.

Read on to know more about the awardees:

1. BERNADETTE J MADRID, PHILIPPINES

Above BERNADETTE J MADRID, PHILIPPINES

Violence against children takes various forms that for cultural, social, and economic reasons, are not always or fully recognised. In the Philippines, paediatrician Bernadette J. Madrid has devoted her career to ensuring that the problem is “seen” and fully addressed.

Born to a family of professionals in Iloilo, Philippines, she studied medicine and paediatrics at the University of the Philippines Manila (UP Manila) and did a post-residency fellowship in ambulatory paediatrics at Montefiore Medical Center in New York. The centre’s Child Abuse Program opened her eyes to a problem that she and fellow Filipino doctors did not quite discern, though this was very much a part of daily reality in her home country, with its conditions of poverty, child labour, trafficking, and violence.

Upon her return to the Philippines, she tried to establish a Child Abuse Program in the Philippine General Hospital (PGH) in Manila, the country’s premier public hospital, but the program was short-lived for a lack of support.

Madrid returned to Iloilo, started a private practice, and seemed headed for a quiet, provincial career until she was called back to Manila in 1996 to head an emergency unit for abused children in PGH, at the insistence of UP Manila and American child protection crusader David Bradley and the Advisory Board Foundation (now CityBridge Foundation).

In 1997, Madrid assumed as head of the PGH Child Protection Unit (PGH-CPU), the first such facility in the country. She would in the next twenty-five years pursue an active, multifaceted career that would put her at the helm of what has been praised as “the best medical system for abused children in Southeast Asia.”

Also, Madrid serves as the executive director of the Child Protection Network (CPN), a foundation dedicated to building and overseeing women and child protection units (WCPUs) across the country. She works closely in the foundation together with Bradley, its chairman of the board, and Irene Martel Francisco, its president.

2. SOTHEARA CHHIM, CAMBODIA

Above SOTHEARA CHHIM, CAMBODIA

Fifty-four-year-old Cambodian psychiatrist Sotheara Chhim was only seven years old when the Khmer Rouge took power in Cambodia in 1975 and forced the people of Phnom Penh and other cities to rural camps for a regimen of slave labour and re-education. Children, like Chhim, were separated from their parents to work in these camps. It took more than three years before Chhim was reunited with his family when Phnom Penh was liberated in 1979.

Amid the psychological devastation wrought by a genocidal rule that claimed 1.7 million lives, Chhim studied medicine at Phnom Penh’s University of Health Sciences and was among the first Cambodian psychiatrists to graduate after years of war. The challenge that faced Chhim was forbidding. It is said that 40 per cent of Cambodians suffer from mental health problems. Yet, even today, the resources needed to address the problem are direly lacking. Only 2 per cent of health centres and 59 per cent of referral hospitals offer mental health services to outpatients. There are only two psychiatric inpatient units with a total of fourteen beds to serve a country of about 15 million.

In 2002, Chhim assumed a leading role in mental health as executive director of Cambodia’s Transcultural Psychosocial Organisation (TPO).

TPO Cambodia is the largest non-government organisation in the field of mental health care and psychosocial support in Cambodia. Based in Phnom Penh, it has more than 40 medical professionals and staff and has satellite offices in four provinces.

More from Tatler: Mental Health Check: How Quitting Can Be Courageous

3. TADASHI HATTORI, JAPAN

Above TADASHI HATTORI, JAPAN

Born in Osaka, Japan, Tadashi Hattori graduated from Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine in 1993 and went to work in hospitals in Japan. Asked why he wanted to be a doctor, he said that he had resolved to become one when he was fifteen, after seeing his cancer-stricken father so rudely treated when he was admitted to the hospital. He wanted to become a doctor sensitive to the feelings of patients and their families.

In 2002, he visited Hanoi for the first time at the invitation of a Vietnamese doctor and found that in a country where cataract blindness was prevalent, there was a dire lack of eye specialists and up-to-date treatment facilities, such that it was common for people in rural areas to go blind because they did not have access to needed care or could not afford the cost.

Moved by what he witnessed, Hattori returned to his homeland and used his savings to buy medical equipment to donate and went back to Hanoi. This set him off on a life of shuttling between Japan and Vietnam almost every month, spending a total of 180 days in Vietnam—giving free eye treatments; training Vietnamese doctors; donating equipment and supplies to hospitals—and working in hospitals to raise an income for his family and mission.

4. GARY BENCHEGHIB, INDONESIA

Above GARY BENCHEGHIB, INDONESIA

In Indonesia, a young Frenchman, Gary Bencheghib, is a remarkable and surprising warrior in the fight against marine plastic pollution. When he was nine years old, his parents chose to live in Bali and this has been his home ever since. Moved by a love for nature and adventure, he discovered early on that Bali was not entirely tourism’s picture-perfect paradise; over 30,000 tons of plastic refuse to travel down Bali’s waterways annually.

Indonesia is the largest contributor to marine plastic pollution in the world after China, accounting for more than 600,000 tons of plastic dumped into the world’s oceans every year. Gary was only 14 years old when he and his sister Kelly, age sixteen, and brother Sam, twelve, started a weekly beach clean-up with friends. This effort turned into an organisation called "Make a Change World".

Today, the group produces inspiring, educational multi-media content on plastic pollution and environmental protection.

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With words from the Ramon Magsaysay Awards Foundation (RMAF)

Tatler Asia

Filipina Children’s Rights Crusader, Among This Year's Ramon Magsaysay Awardees

1. BERNADETTE J MADRID, PHILIPPINES

2. SOTHEARA CHHIM, CAMBODIA

3. TADASHI HATTORI, JAPAN

4. GARY BENCHEGHIB, INDONESIA