American Gwendolyn Albert, an occasional contributor to The Prague Post, and Elena Gorolová, a Romany woman from Ostrava, received the award Oct. 31 from Life Together, a nonprofit organization that for years has worked to bridge the gap between Roma and ethnic Czechs.

Both Albert and Gorolová have been outspoken on the issue of forced sterilization of Romany women.

"Last year was sort of a turning point in the fight against illegal sterilizations," said Life Together founder Kumar Vishwanathan.

It is the first human rights award Life Together has handed out. The women received statues made of bread dough placed in traditional Romany handmade baskets.

Albert, 39, has lived in the Czech Republic since 1994, but first arrived shortly before the 1989 revolution as a Fulbright Scholar.

As director of the League of Human Rights in Prague — and someone who has worked for several NGOs like Step by Step and The Organization for Aid to Refugees — Albert has long been a fixture within the local activist community. Much of her attention has focused on Romany issues, namely speaking out against forced sterilization, a subject on which she testified at the United Nations in August, and calling for an end to educational discrimination against Roma.

She has also led the fight to get a pig farm removed from the site of a detention camp where hundreds of Roma died during World War II.

Gorolová, 37, has been the voice of Romany women in north Moravia for several years, being one of the first to come forward and talk about her sterilization at the hands of doctors who she says didn't have her consent.

More than 80 Romany women have come forward in the past two years with similar charges. Besides giving interviews to newspapers, Gorolová went to New York City in August to tell her story in front of a United Nations committee.

In Ostrava, she runs a support group for local Romany women who were sterilized without informed consent.