Dr Yuri Melini remembers well the day they came to assassinate him eight months ago.

He was leaving his mother's house at around 7.30am when a man across the road shouted his name.

Next came the bullets, seven in total, riddling the Guatemalan environmental activist's body and leaving him for dead.

Miraculously, he survived to tell the tale.

"I've been doing this for 20 years, and more particularly in the past 10 years, I have been devoting my life to the area of human rights. And to be honest with you, I've never received a threat in my life, ever.

"They'd never given me any phone calls or anything until that day," he recalled, speaking through an interpreter.

"I've always considered myself a free citizen of the world, someone who lived and fought for human rights freely. So I never really thought that something like that could happen to me.

"As you can imagine, it was all very difficult, but thankfully I survived. I don't know how, but I did it."

At a high-profile awards ceremony in Dublin's City Hall last Friday, Melini's bravery in seeking to protect the environment and uphold the rights of Guatemala's indigenous people was publicly recognised by Front Line director Mary Lawlor when he was honoured with the Front Line Award for 2009.

The awards were set up in 2004 to acknowledge the work of those individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to the protection of human rights in the face of considerable personal risk.

It is difficult to think of a more worthy recipient for this year. Melini has long been a thorn in the side of those who wish to undermine his work.

This has seen him lead the campaign against the contamination of water sources and the occupation of land in nature reserves in his native country.

As director of the Centre of Legal Action In Environment and Social Issues (CALAS), he also helped to win a June 2008 case in Guatemala's constitutional court which sought to change mining laws permitting open-cast mining for gold and other metals.

"You can't imagine how important this is for me, because for the last eight months, I have been living in a very, very difficult situation after the attempt against my life," he told the Sunday Tribune. "I would not be the first one to be assassinated in Guatemala… They are still looking for me.

"I remain firm in the fact that my conviction is what keeps me going, and if I have to pay with my life for anything that may come, then so be it."

Melini still walks with a limp as a result of his horrific injuries, and needs to use a walking frame to get around.

Yet as he made his way to receive his award from the actor and activist Martin Sheen in City Hall, few of those present will have cared about what, in truth, is a relatively minor detail.

For once again last Friday, this remarkable man rightly, and proudly, stood tall.