Cox, vice president of the Royal College of Nursing in the United Kingdom, has become one of Britain’s most outspoken advocates for human rights. For the last three decades, Cox has tirelessly fought for the neglected and oppressed across the globe, which includes the transformation of the former Soviet Union policies for orphaned and abandoned children from institutions to foster family care. She also served the Armenians after an attempted ethnic genocide in Nagorno-Karabakh.
In 1991, Azerbaijan’s policy of ethnic cleansing began with 150,000 Armenians being forced to fight for their right to live in their homeland. Cox wrote about her experience in Nagorno-Karabakh, describing a one-time paradise turning into hell. Azeri soldiers butchered and burned villagers, took 100 women and children as hostages, and looted and set fire to homes. She arrived to find smoldering homes, decapitated corpses and charred remains among the shocked survivors.
Cox has conducted more than a dozen perilous humanitarian efforts in war-torn and devastated countries and is credited with saving hundreds of lives through the food and medicines she provided. She has fought to abolish modern day slavery in many African countries including Sudan, Nigeria and Uganda. Her missions have also benefited various people in the jungles of Burma as well as those suffering in Indonesia and North Korea.
Cox is Chief Executive of Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust (HART), serves as a non-executive director of the Siberian Medical University and has been a trustee of Medical Emergency Relief International (MERLIN).
Because of her unceasing efforts to improve the human condition, she has been nominated as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize. Cox will share her experiences of these forgotten people in her May 9 presentation at Meadow Brook Theater on the campus of Oakland University.
For tickets or more information regarding Cox’s presentation, please call Colette O’Connor at (248) 370-4070 or e-mail oconnor@oakland.edu.