Director of JRS Cambodia in Queen's Birthday Honours

Her Majesty the Queen has made the director of Jesuit Refugee Service Cambodia a Member of the Order of Australia.  The award was made to Sr Denise Coghlan for her service to international humanitarian aid in the Queen's Birthday Honours List.

A Sister of Mercy from Brisbane, Sr Coghlan has spent more than a decade working with Cambodians, both in refugee camps and inside the country itself.

The director of JRS Australia, David Holdcroft SJ, has welcomed the award.

'I was very happy to hear Denise's name in the honours list in what I call the extra-well deserved category', he says. 'I think Denise's work has always had a breadth where she's linking both direct work with refugees and also some of the causes of displacement like cluster munitions and landmines that she'd campaigned so successfully against.

'Her work has been so effective within the country and she's much-loved.'

A long-time campaigner against landmines and cluster munitions, Sr Coghlan recently took part in the Dublin conference aimed at banning the manufacture of cluster bombs, something she described at the time as 'a totally immoral form of behaviour'.


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