Right Livelihood Award Honors Women Challenging Autocrats and AI Harms

STOCKHOLM – The Right Livelihood Award has been presented to two women and two women-led organizations for their work challenging authoritarian rule, violence, discrimination, and the negative impacts of artificial intelligence.

The recipients, chosen from 200 nominations across 72 countries, were honored by the Stockholm-based foundation for their “resistance to systems that push people to the margins, and a shared insistence on putting people back at the center.”

"This year, we honor women who refused to wait for permission,” said Ole von Uexkull, the organization’s executive director. “They are rewriting the rules that autocrats, patriarchs and Silicon Valley’s most powerful men assumed were theirs to write alone."

Jalila Haider, a human rights lawyer from Pakistan, was recognized for defending vulnerable communities against state repression, discrimination, and ethnic violence. As the first female lawyer from her Hazara community, Haider has worked to secure justice for thousands, particularly ethnic, gender, and religious minorities, as well as refugees. Her legal work has also assisted over 600 activists and human rights defenders in regaining their right to travel freely.

The Rural Women’s Assembly, a network of over 178,000 small-scale farmers across 11 Southern African nations, received the award for organizing women to defend land, seed, and bodily autonomy against corporate and patriarchal dispossession. The assembly has established 24 sites for farmers to reproduce and preserve seeds, documenting hundreds of local varieties to protect traditional seed-saving practices.

The Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association was honored for its role in building and safeguarding democracy in Georgia and sustaining civic power amidst an autocratic crackdown. Founded in 1994, the group has been instrumental in drafting the country's post-independence constitution and has secured legal victories leading to policy changes, including protections for people with disabilities, free education for all children, and compensation for victims of Soviet-era repression.

AI researcher Timnit Gebru, born in Ethiopia, was recognized for challenging concentrated power in artificial intelligence and for pioneering digital technology centered on justice, lived experience, and human agency. Gebru, founder of the Distributed AI Research Institute, works to expose the harms caused by AI systems, particularly to marginalized and excluded communities, and critiques the control exerted by a few powerful companies over the technology.