The fourth award ceremony on 22nd January 1986, Bruno Kreisky's 75th birthday, held in the Karl Renner Institute in Vienna, was characterised by an emphasis on Austria. Among the prize winners were the Vienna Institute for Development and Cooperation, the Austrian Institute for Peace Research and Education, the Bruno Kreisky Archives Foundation, Erich Weisbier, the International Conference of Historians of the Labour Movement, and, posthumously, ambassador Herbert Amry.

The prize to the Austrian Kuratorium for Refugee Aid was a first sign of awareness of the growing human rights problems of migrants in Austria and Europe. Among those afflicted by civil war in Central America, awards went to the Guatemalan Human Rights Commission and the Committee of Mothers and Kindred of Political Prisoners, the „Disappeared“ and Murdered in El Salvador. An award to the Jewish-Arab House in Beth Berl again honoured the Israeli Trade Union Federation Histadrut, which aimed at furthering understanding between the Jewish majority and the Arab minority in Israel.

Prize winners and guests of honour at the award ceremony 1986.

Bruno Kreisky had hoped until the last to take part in this award ceremony. This was however made impossible by his already badly impaired health. In a short greeting Kreisky wrote:

„Whoever has a relatively long life behind him and has traversed the heights and the depths, knows that the fettered spirit always rises again. Let me close with the word of promise which has inspired many of us all our lives: For they cannot kill the spirit, brothers and sisters.“
	Bruno Kreisky giving the laudatory speech 1986.