Lifetime achievement award for Amartya Sen

BANGKOK: Nobel laureate Amratya Sen has been conferred Lifetime Achievement Award by UNESCAP as part of it's 60th anniversary celebrations. "The award is a symbol of our pride that a son of our region has risen to be an eminent citizen of the world," Executive Secretary of the Bangkok-based UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, Kim Hak-Su said describing Sen as a citizen of the Asian and Pacific region during the presentation ceremony Wednesday.

Praising his contributions, a UN Information Service office statement said "Professor Sen's seminal contributions have revolutionised contemporary thinking and profoundly affected the policies of the United Nations and countries across the globe."

"Professor Sen's writings on social choice, welfare distribution, poverty, famines, democracy, individual freedom and human identity have extended the forntiers of contemporary thinking on some of the most pressing issues facing the region," he noted. Professor Sen, speaking at the function, emphesised on the contributions made by Asian civilizations to the world.

"We have reason to be proud of what we Asians have been able to do for ourselves and for world civilization," he said.

"But there is a lot to do still. The celebration of the past achievements of Asia's parliamentary inclinations as well as its vast immensities is also a good moment to think of the future. I would like to be able to say: the best is yet to come," he said.

Born in 1933, in India, Professor Sen was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1998, the only Asian to date to have been so honoured, for his contributions to welfare economics.