Peter Gabriel has been named as the recipient of Amnesty International’s 2008 Ambassador of Conscience Award.

A long time campaigner for human rights around the world, Gabriel, 58 first worked with Amnesty during the Conspiracy of Hope Tour in 1986 and then on the Human Rights Now! Tour in 1988. Gabriel went on to found Witness, a video community campaigning for human rights and more recently, The Elders, a private alliance of senior global figures to launch diplomatic assaults on the globe’s most intractable problems.

 The award, now in its sixth year, has been given previously to Nelson Mandela, musicians U2, Former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson and dramatist Vaclav Havel, who was the last president of Czechoslovakia. It will be presented to Gabriel on Sept 10 in London by The Edge, the U2 guitarist, who credited the former Genesis singer for recruiting him to Amnesty International.