Princess Juliana received the first International Four Freedoms Award in the Koorkerk in Middelburg on Saturday, October 16, 1982. Former Minister Max van der Stoel received the Freedom of Speech award. The other three laureates that year were also Dutch. In the years that followed, many, often foreign, laureates have set foot on Zeeland soil. Like Nelson Mandela for example, and Malala Yousafzai, Dalai Lama, Simon Wiesenthal, Desmond Tutu, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya and Angela Merkel.

On Friday, October 14 of last year, forty years of Four Freedoms Awards were celebrated and commemorated in the same Koorkerk during the lustrum event ‘40 years of Four Freedoms Awards 1982 - 2022’ in the presence of Princess Beatrix. The event looked back on the past forty years, but also looked forward to the future.

One of the speakers at the lustrum event was Ramin Shahzamani, director of War Child Holland. War Child received the Freedom from Want Award in 2008 for helping hundreds of thousands of children in warzones worldwide to cope with trauma, build self-confidence, and learn to read, write and count. In his speech, he emphasised what the four freedoms mean in the world of the children for whom they fight.

In addition to looking back over the past forty years, we also looked to the future. Four young people presented their views on freedom. Ema Kovalova (HZ University of Applied Sciences), Cathelijne Aarnoudse (Calvijn College), Yurri Baranenko (UCR) and Antonio Guequierre (Scalda) told in an impressive speech what freedom means to them. As a Ukrainian refugee, Yurri came to the Netherlands with his family in search of peace and freedom. In his speech he called on all guests to have a moment of silence for the defenders of Ukraine.

In addition, Anne Roosevelt, granddaughter of former President Franklin D. Roosevelt, was a guest and held a speech. The University College Roosevelt Choir sang a song inspired by Malala Yousafzai's speech at the 2014 awards ceremony. Malala received the Freedom from Fear Award there.

In honour of forty years of Four Freedoms Awards, the anniversary book ‘40 Years of Four Freedoms Awards’ was published. Chairman of the Roosevelt Foundation Han Polman handed the first copy to Princess Beatrix.

The lustrum book presents forty years of Four Freedoms Awards in a nutshell, but also addresses the question what the four freedoms actually mean to us, in the past, the present and the future. The book is available at the Liberation Museum Zeeland in Nieuwdorp.

Chairman of the Roosevelt Foundation Han Polman on forty years of Four Freedoms Awards:

Since William vanden Heuvel 'brought' the Four Freedoms Awards to Middelburg - now forty years ago – we draw attention to the respect for and protection of these fundamental freedoms, for ourselves and for others, by presenting the Four Freedoms Awards in Zeeland. We do this together with our partners and with livestreams of the award ceremony, activities such as the school tours and with the Four Freedoms Meet-up we reach an even ever-growing and also young audience.

We do so and continue to do so with a sense of pride and responsibility, in the knowledge that President Roosevelt’s vision – a world based on the Four Freedoms – has not yet been achieved, and in the hope and confidence that the inspiring example set by the Four Freedoms Awards laureates over the past forty years will follow.