Pakistani Lawyer Jalila Haider Wins 2026 Right Livelihood Award for Defending Persecuted Communities

Pakistani human rights lawyer Jalila Haider has received the 2026 Right Livelihood Award, often called the “Alternative Nobel Prize”, for defending some of the country’s most persecuted and vulnerable communities, the Stockholm-based foundation announced on Wednesday.

Haider is the first female lawyer from Pakistan’s Hazara community, a Shia Muslim minority that has faced sustained sectarian violence and systemic discrimination in Balochistan. The jury honoured her, in its words, “for breaking barriers, as the first female lawyer from her Hazara community, to challenge ethnic, state and patriarchal persecution, guided by the conviction that no human being is illegal,” according to Right Livelihood.

Her law firm in one of Pakistan’s most volatile regions has provided pro bono defence to minorities, refugees and the transgender community, taking on more than 7,000 cases others considered too risky or unprofitable, the foundation said. She has also helped some 600 human rights defenders and political activists get removed from no-fly lists.

In 2018, Haider led a seven-day hunger strike in Quetta demanding an end to the targeted killings of Hazaras, which forced the army chief of the time to meet her and pledge protection for the community — the first national-level engagement with Hazara women’s protests in the country’s history.

The 2026 laureates were chosen from 200 nominations across 72 countries. Alongside Haider, the award went to AI researcher Timnit Gebru, the Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association and the Rural Women’s Assembly of Southern Africa. The recipients will be honoured at a televised presentation in Stockholm on December 1.

Sources

• Right Livelihood — Jalila Haider receives Right Livelihood Award
• Right Livelihood — 2026 Laureates announcement
• The Business Standard (TBS News) — ‘Alternative Nobel’ honours women activists, AI researcher