Renowned philanthropist and humanitarian Bilquis Edhi has been selected as the ‘Person of the Decade’ by international web-based organisation Impact Hallmarks.
Human rights rapporteur of the UN Prof Yanghee Lee and US ethicist Stephen Soldz, too, have received the title.
A spokesperson for the Edhi Foundation told APP Bilquis was declared the most impactful person of the first two decades of the 21st century.
She is a professional nurse and heads the Bilquis Edhi Foundation. She has spent more than six decades of her life on humanitarian work and her charity has saved over 42,000 unwanted babies so far, by placing ‘jhoolas’ [cradles] at the Edhi Homes and centres across Pakistan.
Called the Mother of Pakistan, Bilquis Edhi has already been given various national and foreign awards including Hilal-e-Imtiaz (Pakistan), the Lenin Peace Prize, Mother Teresa Memorial International Award for Social Justice (2015), and the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service, she received along with her husband Abdul Sattar Edhi in 1986.
Another honour the contest brought for the country was declaration of another Pakistani – an erudite, a polymath and a discoverer, Prof Aurangzeb Al Hafi – among “Top of the Top Ten” for his scientific discoveries.
The finalists were shortlisted out of over 1.6 million notables with diverse backgrounds and from over 190 countries.
After the shortlisting process, an online opinion poll for global audience was carried out to vote for the Person of the Decade based on the impact value the person holds.
Those enlisted as the top ten include:
- Dr Muang Zarni— human rights activist (Myanmar)
- Graca Machel— an advocate of women and children rights (Mozambique)
- Greta Thunberg— the youngest climate activist (Sweden)
- Jacinda Ardern— 40th Prime Minister of New Zealand (New Zealand)
- Maggie Doyne— founder of the BlinkNow Foundation (Nepal)
- Prof. Aurangzeb Hafi— erudite, polymath, discoverer (Pakistan)
- Pushpa Basnet— social worker (Nepal)
The remaining ten of the 20 finalists categorised as the domino effect runners up include:
- Ban Ki Moon— former UN Sec Gen (South Korea)
- Dr. Francois Englert— scientist, discoverer (Belgium)
- Dr. Neil Turok — physicist, theorist (South Africa)
- Dr. Peter Higgs— scientist, discoverer (United Kingdom)
- Engin Altan Duzyatan— television actor, celebrity (Turkey)
- Kofi Annan— former UN Sec Gen (Ghana)
- Nitesh Jangir — student, inventor (India)
- Rayvon Stewart— student, inventor (Jamaica)
- Steve Brachman— journalist (US)
