Anti-slavery advocate Grace Forrest has become the first Australian woman to be selected for the prestigious Roosevelt Institute Four Freedoms Award.
She is set to join the likes of high-profile global advocates who’ve been honoured with this award in the past, including Malala Yousafzai, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Nelson Mandela and former German chancellor Angela Merkel. The only other Australian to receive the award is former Foreign Affairs Minister Gareth Evans.
The Four Freedoms Awards are presented each year to men and women committed to the four principles proclaimed by US president Franklin D. Roosevelt in a historic 1941 speech: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom of want and freedom from fear.
Forrest’s work eradicating modern slavery will be honoured with the ‘freedom from fear’ award.
The eldest child of billionaire mining magnate Andrew Forrest and Nicola Forrest, she co-founded the international human rights group, Walk Free, in 2011 under the family’s philanthropic venture, the Minderoo Foundation.
Each year, Walk Free produces the Global Slavery Index, which is the world’s most comprehensive dataset on modern slavery.
The Index estimates that 50 million people were living in modern slavery on any given day in 2021, an increase of 10 million people since 2016.
In an essay for Marie Claire in 2023, Forrest shared that since founding Walk Free she’s “recognised the innate vulnerability women and girls face with modern slavery and other forms of extreme exploitation”, but has also come to realise their true power to “reimagine and build long-term change”.
Forrest has campaigned against this human rights abuse for over a decade, developing policy based on extensive field research. This advocacy has informed new laws across the globe.
Recently, she joined former UK prime minister Theresa May’s Global Commission on Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking, alongside UN Under-Secretary General Adama Dieng. They will work towards putting modern slavery on the global political agenda, especially in G20 countries where 50 per cent of all people in modern slavery live, according to Walk Free’s Index.
Upon hearing the Roosevelt freedom award announcement, Forrest said on Wednesday she is “deeply humbled” to be nominated and considers it “an honour” as there’s “a rich history of human rights and international law behind it”.
The other award announced on Wednesday was the Freedom of Speech medal, which will go to Netherlands-based investigative journalism group Bellingcat for its work separating fake news from fact in international conflicts.
The awards ceremony will take place in the Netherlands on April 11.