Bianca Jagger wins 'Alternative Nobel'

Bianca Jagger wins 'Alternative Nobel'

STOCKHOLM: Bianca Jagger of Nicaragua was awarded an honor known
as the "Alternative Nobel Prize" on Thursday for her work to
promote human rights and social justice.

Jagger, who first became famous for her eight-year marriage to
rock star Mick Jagger, shares the 2004 Right Livelihood Award
with two others.

Russian human rights and civil liberties lobby group Memorial
was also awarded the prize along with Argentine environmentalist
Raul Montenegro, for his work with indigenous people and
conservation of natural resources.

The award, founded in 1980, tries to compete with the
prestigious Nobel prizes, set up in 1901 by Swedish industrialist
Alfred Nobel who invented dynamite.

The Right Livelihood Award, worth 2.0 million Swedish crowns
($297,300) this year, was set up by Swedish-German philatelist
and former European Parliament member Jakob von Uexkull.

Von Uexkull found the peace, medicine, physics, chemistry,
economics and literature Nobels too academic and narrowly focused
on the industrialized world.

He set up his alternative prize to recognize efforts to tackle
pollution, poverty, human rights abuse and the danger of nuclear
war. Joint awards are frequently made.

"Bianca Jagger has shown over many years how celebrity can be
put at the service of the exploited and disadvantaged," the Right
Livelihood Award Foundation said in a statement.

Past winners include Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordechai
Vanunu, Britain's anti-nuclear lobby Trident Ploughshares and
Kenyan environmental activist Wangari Maathai, who will receive
the 2004 Nobel peace prize in Oslo on Friday.