Jaka Bizilj - Goodwill Efforts

Goodwill Efforts

Jaka Bizilj is a member of the Clinton Global Initiative and collaborates with and supports, among others, UNICEF, Unifem, Amnesty International, ONE, amfAR, Richard Gere's work for Tibet and the International Campaign for Tibet, which was initiated through a meeting with the Dalai Lama in 2004. After visiting Nelson Mandela in November 2006, he began working with the "Schools for Africa"- program, a joint initiative of UNICEF and the Nelson Mandela Foundation. Since 2002, Jaka Bizilj has raised a notarized amount of more than three million Euros for a variety of charitable causes. He has co-chaired various charitable events alongside Federal Ministers, head of states and legendary artists such as Elizabeth Taylor.

Following the tragedy of 9/11 Jaka Bizilj launched the Cinema for Peace initiative with an annual gala as a platform for communicating humanitarian, political and social issues through the medium of film. The Cinema for Peace Gala has grown to the attention of well over a billion media hits each year, possibly making it one of the most relevant film events in the world. Bob Geldof described the awards gala as "the Oscars with brains". George Clooney said to have found inspiration for his Oscar-nominated film "Good Night and Good Luck" in the Cinema for Peace initiative.

Previous hosts, chairs and speakers at the Cinema for Peace galas include Leonardo DiCaprio, President Mikhail Gorbachev, Richard Gere, Buzz Aldrin, Sean Penn, Dustin Hoffman, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Antonio Banderas, Sharon Stone, Catherine Deneuve, Forest Whitaker, Clint Eastwood, Hilary Swank, Robert De Niro and Uma Thurman. In 2007 Cinema for Peace launched together with Amnesty International the “International Human Rights Film Award” and together with the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the “Cinema for Peace Award for Justice” in 2009. President Mikhail Gorbachev presented the first “International Green Film Award” on the occasion of Cinema for Peace 2009 to Leonardo DiCaprio.

Jaka Bizilj distributed the Bosnian Oscar-winning war-satire "No Man's Land" by Danis Tanovic. Ahead of the G8 Summit in Germany he produced at the initiative of Bob Geldof and Richard Curtis a remake of the Golden Globe-winning film "The Girl in the Café" with Iris Berben, Julia Jentsch, Jan Josef Liefers and Catherine Deneuve in 2007. He also initiated Bob Geldof to become the editor of Europe's biggest-selling newspaper BILD for a day in order to publish an issue solely dedicated to Africa, with guest contributions by personalities such as the Pope, Bill Gates and Bono.

Together with the Trust Fund for Victims at the International Criminal Court he organized with the Cinema for Peace Foundation - "The Special Evening on Justice" on the eve the International Criminal Court Review Conference of the Rome Statute in Kampala, Uganda. The Cinema for Peace Foundation presented on this occasion the first "Justitia Award" to honor the United Nations and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for establishing and supporting the International Criminal Court. The award was presented to Ban Ki-moon by the Council of Europe Goodwill Ambassador Bianca Jagger, founder and chairperson of the Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation. Ban Ki-moon said that it is a great honour to accept the first "Justitia Award" and he thanked the CFPF for recognizing the UN's persistent efforts to establish justice in the world.]

On the occasion of the 12 IAAF World Championships in Athletics in Berlin 2009 he launched together with Gerhard Janetzky the initiative "Sports for Peace". This was preceded in 2008 by a unilateral appeal in the International Herald Tribune on the occasion of the Olympic Games, signed by more than 100 world champions, Olympic champions and world record holders in order to remind China to live up to the Olympic ideals and universal human rights. The first “Sports for Peace” Awards were presented at the “Sports for Peace” inauguration 2009 to IOC Vice President Sergey Bubka, Laureus ambassador Dr. Edwin Moses and those players of the Iranian national football team, who wore green wristbands during their match against South Korea, thus expressing their solidarity with the freedom and democracy movement in Iran. They all identified themselves with the “Sports for Peace” goal: to create awareness for the peace-building ideals of sport and the need for the implementation of a global communications platform designed to also support various sports oriented aid projects.

On June 8, 2010, Jaka Bizilj hosted the "Sports for Peace" gala on the occasion of the FIFA World Cup in South Africa - the world's biggest single sporting event and first ever FIFA World Cup to take place in Africa - bringing together the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, South African President Jacob Zuma, Madama Graca Machel, the Nelson Mandela Foundation, 1Goal Ambassadors and many other dignitaries from across the globe in order to address this serious issue - the second Millennium Development Goal (MDG): "achieve universal primary education by 2015".

In 2011 he organized for the first time a Cinema for Peace Dinner in Cannes and accompanied the visit of the 14th Dalai Lama to Wiesbaden with a film program and a charity dinner to support the culture of Tibet. Furthermore, he assisted on 24 and 25 August in The Hague a symposium on the issue of child soldiers which was held at the International Criminal Court in The Hague on the occasion of the closing statements of the case against Thomas Lubanga by arranging for film screenings and a charity dinner. Together with former child soldiers, UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie and the UN Special Representative for Children in Armed Conflict, Radhika Coomaraswamy all parties involved signed a petition urging all UN member states to condemn the use of child soldiers, to fight the use of sexual violence in war and to make efforts to prevent that schools and hospitals become targets of armed attacks. On 23 September 2011 Jaka Bizilj produced the presentation of the first universal human rights logo on the occasion of the UN General Assembly in New York.