DetNews.com, MI
May 9 2008
Humanitarian, Nobel nominee addresses local school
Catherine Jun / The Detroit News
SOUTHFIELD — Missiles were aimed skyward, but planes carrying food
and medical supplies landed anyway to aid besieged Armenians at the
Azerbaijan-Armenian border.
Though not widely known in the United States, this humanitarian
campaign during Azerbaijan’s attempt to wipe out the Armenian enclave
of Nagorno-Karabakh in the early 1990s was led by Lady Caroline Cox,
former Deputy Speaker of Britain’s House of Lords and human rights
advocate.
Cox, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, retold the dramatic stories of aid
and rescue Friday morning to more than 160 middle and high school
students at A.G.B.U Alex & Marie Manoogian School, an Armenian charter
school in Southfield.
Showing photos of survivors and cities reduced to rubble — the less
graphic images of the resulting devastation — Cox said everyone has
a responsibility to help those who are neglected and oppressed around
the globe.
"We can’t do everything, but each one of us should say to ourselves:
we must not do nothing," she said.
Chief executive of Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust (HART), Cox has
visited Armenia more than 60 times, as well as the war-torn region of
Darfur, Sudan.
At another scheduled speaking engagement at the Meadow Brook Theatre
Friday evening, Cox will be awarded the 2008 Nightingale Award for
Excellence by Oakland University officials and honored with a
reception on the Rochester Hills campus.
At the Manoogian School, students for their part gave Cox $500 to help
run a rehabilitation center in Nagorno-Karabakh that serves disabled
children and is financially supported by HART.
Abigail Newman, 16, of West Bloomfield, said she was struck by Cox’s
compassion.
"I t makes me relieved to know that it’s not just my school and not
just my community that’s interested in Armenia," said Newman, a junior
in high school. "It brings such hope for the future."
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