Ma. Cecilia Flores-Oebanda hails from Negros Occidental, a small province in the Visayas region. She spent most of her life as a freedom fighter and worked with the urban poor, peasants, sugar plantation workers, women, youth and children. Because of her struggles, she became a political prisoner for four years under the Marcos dictatorship. She was released from detention as a result of the 1986 EDSA People Power Revolution that put an end to the dictatorship.
Cecil contributes to the larger struggle for the promotion of human rights by addressing the rights of a big number of marginalized children and young women. She is an advocate of social dialogue as means to ventilate and resolve issues and to build partnerships with stakeholders.
An effective approach employed by Cecil to fight for the rights of child domestic workers, child laborers, and victims of trafficking is to mobilize partners from both the civil society and the government. Through creative engagements, Cecil helps government and partner institutions determine their core competencies and their most effective roles in dealing with the problem.
Cecil received the 2005 Anti-Slavery Award given by the Anti-Slavery International. She was recognized by the UK Government as one of the Modern-Day Abolitionists in the celebration of the Bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act in 2007.
The following year, Cecil was conferred with the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship at Oxford University in the UK by the Skoll Foundation. She was named by the US Department of State as one of its Heroes Acting to End Modern-Day Slavery in its 2008 Trafficking in Persons Report and was presented the first Iqbal Masih Award for the Elimination of Child Labor by the US Department of Labor.
Recently, she was chosen by children across the globe to join the prestigious roster of candidates for the 2011 World's Children's Prize for the Rights of the Child. Millions of children all over the world will participate in a Global Vote to determine their prize laureate. The patrons of the World's Children's Prize include H.M. Queen Silvia of Sweden and Nelson Mandela. Cecil, a globally recognized human rights advocate and multi-awarded freedom fighter, serves as an international expert on human trafficking, child labor and domestic work.
