Philippe Sands uses book prize to raise £60,000 for charity

A month after Baillie Gifford winner Philippe Sands announced he would donate his £30,000 prize money to charity, the writer has revealed Médecins Sans Frontières, SOS Méditerranée and Women for Refugee Women will receive more than £20,000 each after his donation was matched by other parties.

The human rights lawyer and author of East West Street announced he would be donating his winnings as he accepted the prestigious non-fiction book award in November. Investment management firm and prize sponsor Baillie Gifford then matched Sands’s donation, while his publisher Weidenfeld & Nicolson and the chair of judges Stephanie Flanders also made donations.

Sands’s decision to donate followed a conversation with Hisham Matar before the event. Matar, who was shortlisted for The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between, had suggested that if one of them won they should donate their money to refugee charities, a suggestion Sands says he acted on “in a haze” as he made his acceptance speech on stage.

“I can’t remember anything I said because I was so shocked at winning,” he told the Guardian. “I hadn’t prepared anything to say, so it was all off the cuff.” He added that he and Matar had been inundated with suggestions of charities to donate the money to, but picked these three because the money would go “straight to the frontline” and not be used for any central overheads.

SOS Méditerranée is the smallest of the three. It operates a boat staffed with medics that patrols the Mediterranean in search of refugees. “It has already taken 6,500 people out of the water,” Sands said. It will be the only boat patrolling the central Mediterranean for stranded refugees this winter.

Matar and Sands chose Women for Refugee Women because of reported abuses at the Yarl’s Wood Immigration Centre. Writer Natasha Walter, director of Women for Refugee Women, said the charity was immensely grateful for the money. She added: “Philippe has previously supported our work against the indefinite detention of women who seek asylum and we admire him for standing up for refugees in this current climate, which is often so hostile to those who are forced to leave their homes to seek safety. This gift will make a huge difference to our work.”

Sands said: “It’s been very hard to choose. We decided against setting up our own foundation because we felt we should get the money out there as soon as possible.” The charities may receive the donations as early as next week.

Sands’s winning book is an account of the history of genocide and crimes against humanity in the aftermath of the Nuremburg trials of 1946. It explores how the two concepts were included in the judgment and uses the author’s family history to illustrate the impact of these crimes.