Refugee charity Freedom from Torture took home the Overall Award for Excellence at this year’s Charity Awards for its #StoptheFlights campaign, which encouraged commercial airlines to pull out from contracts with the government to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.
After six months of campaigning, four out of six airlines the charity lobbied had ruled themselves out of the scheme.
Freedom from Torture received the Overall Award to a standing ovation. It was chosen from a total of 10 category winners and also won the Campaigning & Advocacy category.
When asked what the win means for the charity, chief executive Sonya Sceats told Civil Society: “That people power wins and that the politics of division will not work in Britain any longer.
“It is so lovely to feel the support of our civil society colleagues in this award this evening. Thank you so very much.”
Freedom from Torture’s director of survivor engagement, Kolbassia Haoussou, said: “We are all in it together and together we will always come up stronger and this award and also the campaign we ran proved that.
“So thank you everybody and thank you to the Charity Awards.”
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