In one of his first public international functions as Britain’s new Secretary of State for International Development, Hilary Benn, last week marked World Habitat Day by presenting Zena Daysh with UN-HABITAT’s Scroll of Honour award for a lifetime dedicated to improving human settlements around the world. New Zealand-born Zena Daysh, now well into her eighties, has been a political in-fighter on the international stage for over five decades doing battle on human settlements issues. Her passionate interest in human ecology led to the establishment of the Malta Human Environment Council, and later the Commonwealth Human Ecology Council (CHEC) which has worked closely with UN-HABITAT for many years. She played a leading role at the UN General Assembly Session on Human Settlements (Istanbul + 5) in New York in June 2001 where she explained the work of the Commonwealth Consultative Group on Human Settlements to an international audience |
