Rev. Emile Shoufani, a 56-year-old Israeli Arab Christian, is the principal of the Mutran school in Nazareth, which, since 1988, has had a partnership with a Jewish school so as to allow Arab and Jewish children get to know each other.

In 2003 Shoufani led a joint Jewish-Arab pilgrimage to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp as part of the project.

The Peace Education Prize has been awarded by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) since 1981 and is endowed with $27,500.