Advocacy statements
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Basil Fernando, leading Asian human rights defender, dies at 81
Basil Fernando, a 2014 Right Livelihood Laureate and one of Asia’s foremost human rights defenders, passed away on September 30 at the age of 81. Over more than four decades, Fernando connected ordinary citizens fighting for their rights at the grassroots with the institutions pushing for structural reform at the policy level. “Basil Fernando gave…
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Release MNC5: Defending the environment is not illegal
Right Livelihood and the undersigned Laureates are deeply concerned about the situation in Cambodia where five activists of 2023 Right Livelihood Laureate Mother Nature Cambodia (MNC) remain unjustly imprisoned for six to eight years for the peaceful exercise of their rights to freedom of speech, association, and public assembly on behalf of environmental protection in…
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2026 Laureates challenge autocracy, patriarchy and AI bias
STOCKHOLM — The 2026 Right Livelihood Award goes to women and women-led organisations confronting the world’s most entrenched power structures: authoritarian rule, patriarchal violence, and unchecked AI development. Their common thread is resistance to systems that push people to the margins, and a shared insistence on putting people back at the centre. The 2026 Right…
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Georgian rights group GYLA receives 2026 Right Livelihood Award
STOCKHOLM — The Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association (GYLA) is among the recipients of the 2026 Right Livelihood Award, also known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize”, for building and protecting democracy in Georgia. As an increasingly autocratic government chokes civil society, GYLA remains a beacon of justice and human rights. GYLA will hold an online press…
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Jalila Haider receives Right Livelihood Award for defending Pakistan’s persecuted and forgotten
STOCKHOLM — Jalila Haider is receiving the 2026 Right Livelihood Award as the first female lawyer from her persecuted Hazara Community. She has combined legal aid and street activism to achieve justice for Pakistan’s most vulnerable communities against a backdrop of extreme patriarchal and state oppression. Haider will hold an online press conference today, September…
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Rural Women’s Assembly receives Right Livelihood Award for organising 178,000 female farmers in Southern Africa to defend land and bodily autonomy
STOCKHOLM — Rural Women’s Assembly (RWA), a self-organised, transnational movement of over 178,000 small-scale farmers across eleven Southern African nations, is among this year’s Right Livelihood Laureates. Confronting corporate and patriarchal oppression head-on, the “rowdy” movement operates as “Guardians of Land, Life, Seed and Love.” RWA will hold an online press conference today, September 30…
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Pioneering AI researcher Timnit Gebru receives 2026 Right Livelihood Award for challenging concentrated power in technology
STOCKHOLM — US artificial intelligence researcher Timnit Gebru is among the recipients of the 2026 Right Livelihood Award, also known as the “alternative Nobel Prize”, for exposing the human and environmental harms behind artificial intelligence and pioneering community-led approaches that challenge the concentration of power in the technology sector. Timnit Gebru will hold an online…
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We’re looking for an Education Officer!
Can you make the viability of building a just, peaceful and sustainable world for all visible to the next generation of changemakers? Right Livelihood is seeking an Education Officer. Purpose This role will further develop our education work and focus on developing educational formats for activists and university students, both in-person and online, to learn…
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We’re announcing the 2026 Right Livelihood Laureates on September 30!
Who are the change-makers receiving the 2026 Right Livelihood Award? You can find out on Wednesday, September 30, 2026. The 2026 Right Livelihood Laureates will be announced at 6 am Stockholm time (Central European Summer Time), followed by a press conference livestreamed at 8 am. You can follow the announcement live on YouTube or on…
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Building the case for future Laureates: Inside the Research
As the Jury‘s decision to select the 2026 Right Livelihood Laureates gets closer, Ben Lyons, the latest addition to the Research Team, reveals how the case for a Laureate is built: from getting proposals to analysing profiles and contexts in an individualised manner to compile a Jury Report with almost a hundred nominations. The complexity…
