Winners of the 2017 Magsaysay Award announced in Manila

The recipients of this year’s prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award, an honour regarded as Asia’s Nobel Prize have been announced.

The award went to Japan’s Yoshiaki Ishizawa, Abdon Nababan of Indonesia, Gethsie Shanmugam of Sri Lanka, Tony Tay of Singapore, Lilia de Lima and the Philippine Educational Theatre Association of the Philippines (PETA).

All five individuals and Cecilia Garrucho, president of PETA, attended the award ceremony on Thursday held at the Cultural Centre of the Philippines in Manila. Philippine Vice President Leni Robredo conferred the awards.

At the ceremony, the recipients received a certificate, a medallion bearing the image of Magsaysay, and a cash prize. The 2017 recipients join 318 other Magsaysay laureates.

The Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation was created in 1957, named after the country’s third president after the second world war who died in a plane crash that year, to honour outstanding individuals and groups in Asia.