Alternative Nobel Prize honours activists for rights and fairer AI
The Right Livelihood Award goes this year to four laureates working for human rights, democracy, farmers’ rights and fairer artificial intelligence.
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The Right Livelihood Award, often called the alternative Nobel Prize, was awarded on Wednesday to four people and organisations. The jury selected, among others, a Pakistani human rights lawyer, an AI researcher and a South African network of women farmers.
The prize goes to Jalila Haider from Pakistan, Timnit Gebru, the Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association and the Rural Women’s Assembly. According to the organisation, the laureates bring together legal protection, democratic resilience, women’s rights and criticism of concentrated power.
Haider is being honoured for her work as a human rights lawyer for vulnerable communities in Pakistan. The organisation calls her the first female lawyer from the Hazara community. Her work focuses, among other things, on ethnic and religious minorities, women and refugees.
The Rural Women’s Assembly is a network of small-scale women farmers in eleven countries in southern Africa. According to Right Livelihood, it represents more than 178,000 farmers. The network campaigns for land rights, access to seeds and the independence of rural women.
The Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association is receiving the prize for its work on democratic rights and civic influence in Georgia. The organisation has existed since 1994 and works through legal proceedings and public campaigns. The prize organisation links the award to the pressure on civil society organisations in the country.
Timnit Gebru is being honoured for her criticism of the concentration of power in the AI sector and her research into the harm that algorithmic systems can cause. Gebru is the founder of the Distributed AI Research Institute, which seeks to approach artificial intelligence research through its social consequences and human experiences.
The laureates were chosen from two hundred nominations from 72 countries. The prize was established in 1980 by Jakob von Uexkull and is traditionally awarded shortly before the Nobel Prizes are announced. The award is not a scientific Nobel Prize and in itself says nothing about the technical quality of each individual research result; it is a social and humanitarian prize.
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The names, organisations, figures and reasons for the awards were checked against AP and the prize organisation. The article makes clear that this is a social award, not a scientific prize.
- confirmed The Right Livelihood Award 2026 is going to four laureates. — AP names four recipients: a lawyer, a researcher and two organisations. source
- confirmed The Rural Women’s Assembly represents more than 178,000 small-scale farmers in eleven countries. — This figure and geographical reach are stated by Right Livelihood. source
- confirmed Timnit Gebru is the founder of the Distributed AI Research Institute. — AP mentions this in its description of her award. source
- confirmed The prize was established in 1980. — AP gives 1980 as the founding year. source
Editor's note
The laureates and the reasoning have been taken from the official prize information and described by AP. The broader qualifications about the political situation in Georgia have deliberately been worded cautiously.Sources
- Right Livelihood Award honors women taking on autocrats, discrimination and unchecked AI — AP News
- 2026 Laureates — Right Livelihood
More on this in Dutch media
- NU.nl — „right livelihood award”
- De Telegraaf — „right livelihood award”
- AD — „right livelihood award”