7 receive U.N. human rights awards

UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 10 (UPI) -- Seven people, including slain Pakistani leader Benazir Bhutto, were honored for their human rights efforts Wednesday by the U.N. General Assembly in New York.

The winners also included a Congolese doctor who treats female victims of sexual violence and a nun who fought for indigenous rights before her murder in Brazil three years ago, the United Nations said in a news release.

The prizes, awarded every five years, coincided with the 60th anniversary of the adoption of the organization's Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Besides Bhutto, who had an uneven tenure during two terms as Pakistan's prime minister before her 2007 assassination, the winners were former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour; former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark; Carolyn Gomes, executive director and co-founder of Jamaicans for Justice; Denis Mukwege, co-founder of the General Referral Hospital of Panzi in the Democratic Republic of the Congo; Human Rights Watch, represented by its executive director, Kenneth Roth; and Dorothy Stang of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur.

Previous winners of the awards, started four years ago, include former South African President Nelson Mandela, the late Rev. Martin Luther King, the late U.S. first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and Amnesty International.