Photo/Illutration Rena Kawasaki, winner of the 2022 International Children’s Peace Prize, speaks at the award ceremony in The Hague on Nov. 14. (Provided by KidsRights 2022)

Japanese teenager Rena Kawasaki won this year’s International Children’s Peace Prize on Nov. 14 for her work to get more young people involved in politics, the environment and society.

KidsRights Foundation, a children’s rights advocacy organization based in the Netherlands, gives the prize every year to young people who have made significant contributions to the protection of children’s rights.

Kawasaki, 17, a student at an international school in Osaka, became the first Japanese to receive the prize.

“This award is not for me but to honor the efforts you have made to empower an unknown 17-year-old from Osaka,” Kawasaki said in English at the award ceremony in The Hague.

The prize was created in 2005. Previous winners include Pakistani Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai and Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg.

Kawasaki founded the Japanese branch of Earth Guardians, an international nongovernmental organization, when she was 14.

She created an online platform for young people to contact local political representatives so that their voices could be reflected in the decision-making for policies.

She has also participated in projects to clean rivers and to create a sustainable city.

At the award ceremony, Kawasaki said in Japanese, “It’s not that Japanese youths aren’t interested in politics, it’s that they often have yet to find reasons to trust politics or to vote.

“Let us believe the political system will support our hopes and dreams,” she said.

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