The Right Livelihood Award was presented Wednesday to two women and two women-led organisations challenging authoritarian rule, violence and discrimination against women, and the harms caused by artificial intelligence, the Stockholm-based foundation said.
The recipients of the international award are a Pakistani lawyer, an Ethiopian-born AI researcher, a Georgian legal rights group and a network of women farmers across Southern Africa.
The annual prize was created in 1980 by Swedish-German philanthropist Jakob von Uexkull, who wanted to honour work that contributes to a more just and peaceful world. It is traditionally announced shortly before the Nobel Prizes, which will be announced starting next Monday.
Right Livelihood said this year’s recipients were being awarded for their “resistance to systems that push people to the margins, and a shared insistence on putting people back at the centre.” They were chosen from 200 nominations from 72 countries.
“A system built to serve the few was never going to hold. This year, we honour women who refused to wait for permission,” Ole von Uexkull, the nephew of the prize founder and the organisation’s executive director, said. “They are rewriting the rules that autocrats, patriarchs and Silicon Valley’s most powerful men assumed were theirs to write alone.”
