STOCKHOLM (AP) — The Right Livelihood Award was awarded Wednesday to two women and two women-led organizations 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 honor 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 center.” They were chosen from 200 nominations from 72 countries.
“A system built to serve the few was never going to hold. This year, we honor women who refused to wait for permission,” Ole von Uexkull, the nephew of the prize founder and the organization’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."
Here is a look at the recipients:
Jalila Haider, a human rights lawyer who defends some of Pakistan’s most vulnerable communities from state repression, discrimination against women and ethnic violence, was awarded the prize “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."
By combining legal work with efforts to help communities advocate for themselves, “Haider has secured justice for thousands targeted or ignored by those in power, specifically ethnic, gender and religious minorities, as well as refugees,” the organization said. Haider's law firm has also helped more than 600 political activists and human rights defenders regain the right to travel freely.
Also awarded was the Rural Women’s Assembly “for organizing rural women across Southern Africa into a united force defending land, seed and bodily autonomy against corporate and patriarchal dispossession."
The Rural Women’s Assembly is a self-organized, movement of more than 178,000 small-scale farmers across 11 Southern African nations. It has established 24 sites where farmers reproduce and preserve seeds for future planting and documented hundreds of local seed varieties, helping protect the practice of saving and exchanging traditional seeds, the Swedish foundation said.
The Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association won the prize “for building and safeguarding Georgian democracy and sustaining civic power in the face of an autocratic crackdown."
The group was founded in 1994 by volunteer lawyers who helped draft the country’s first postindependence constitution.
According to Right Livelihood, it has secured major legal victories that reshaped national policy, including protections for people with disabilities, free education for all children and compensation for victims of Soviet-era repression.
Right Livelihood also honored AI researcher Timnit Gebru “for challenging concentrated power in artificial intelligence and pioneering digital technology rooted in justice, lived experience and human agency.”
Gebru, who was born in Ethiopia to a family of Eritrean origin, is the founder of the Distributed AI Research Institute.
Right Livelihood said her work challenges the control that a small number of powerful companies exercise over AI and exposes harms that AI systems are already causing, particularly to communities facing discrimination and exclusion.
FILE — In this May 1, 2018 photo, Pakistani lawyer Jalila Haider, who is then on a hunger strike, rests at a camp in Quetta, Pakistan. (AP Photo/Arshad Butt, File)
The United States is targeting people and companies around the globe that it accuses of financing or enabling Iran's military supply chain, placing sanctions on 10 individuals and entities as it pushes forward with economic warfare against Tehran.
Meanwhile, Iran's Revolutionary Guard urged Americans in a message ahead of U.S. midterm elections to take to the streets and rally against Donald Trump, claiming the U.S. president's war in the Middle East has failed.
Pakistan vowed to defend Saudi Arabia against Iran-backed Houthis by “whatever means,” and in the occupied West Bank, settlers rioted to prevent a Palestinian man escorted by the Israeli military from returning to his home.
Here is the latest news from the Middle East on Tuesday. Full coverage is available here.
The United States is targeting people and companies around the globe that it accuses of being financial facilitators or enablers of Iran’s military supply chain.
The Trump administration is pushing forward with economic warfare against Tehran at a time when renewed diplomacy between the two countries remains uncertain.
The Treasury Department action Tuesday is part of the administration’s “Operation Economic Outcast” campaign, aimed at severing “critical financial lifelines” for the already heavily sanctioned Iranian government.
Ten individuals and entities based in Iran, Hong Kong and Pakistan now face sanctions over accusations of procuring weapons and weapon components for Iran as it fights its now seven-month war against the U.S.
By Farnoush Amiri
Gen. Hossein Mohebbi, spokesman for Iran's Revolutionary Guard, said that the only way for the war in Iran to end is for Washington to admit defeat and leave.
He spoke at a news conference Tuesday in Tehran, reading from what he called a “letter to the American people.” The message was apparently meant for the U.S. public just weeks ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections for the U.S. Senate and Congress — a vote in which Trump’s Republican Party faces fierce headwinds as it looks to maintain control of Congress.
Later, in remarks to The Associated Press, Mohebbi urged Americans to reconsider their leadership and take to the streets and protest Trump's policies to denounce what he called the U.S. government’s warmongering policies.
He accused the United States of using Iran’s nuclear program as a ruse to “plunder Iran’s wealth” and to turn the country “back into a colony.”
Meanwhile, Iran’s currency fell to a new record low Tuesday, with traders in Tehran exchanging more than 2.5 million rials to the U.S. dollar. The currency has repeatedly reached new lows since the war began in February.
A crucial oil pipeline in Saudi Arabia that was shuttered by the kingdom earlier this month after coming under attack is once again operating, a Saudi government official said.
The official, who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, said operations are near pre-attack levels and that the East-West pipeline should be running at full capacity within a few weeks. The kingdom relies on the pipeline to move its crude from oil processing facilities on the Gulf to ports on its western, Red Sea coast.
Saudi Arabia blamed an Iran-backed militia in Iraq for the drone attack that forced the temporary shutdown of the 1,200-kilometer (745-mile) pipeline.
Satellite imagery indicated tankers on Sunday loaded some 12.5 million barrels of oil at the Yanbu export terminal, which is supplied by the East-West Pipeline, and the nearby terminal at Al Muajjiz, the data and analytical firm Kpler said in a report.
Pakistan will use “whatever means are available” to defend Saudi Arabia against Iran-backed Houthi rebels, the country’s defense minister said Tuesday, offering one of Islamabad’s clearest indications yet that it could become directly involved in the widening regional conflict.
Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif declined to say whether Pakistani forces had already participated in airstrikes. He said, however, that Pakistan’s military capabilities would be available to Saudi Arabia under a new mutual defense pact with Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
“I’m not going into detail, but obviously when I say that we are bound by this arrangement to defend Saudi Arabia, that means whatever means are available at our disposal, they’ll be available to Saudi Arabia also. I think that’s a categoric statement,” Asif told reporters during a visit to Rome when asked whether Pakistan had been involved in airstrikes against Iranian operators in Yemen.
Airstrikes by Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces on Tuesday pounded Yemen’s northwestern province of Saada. They were the most intense daily attacks on the homebase of Iran-backed Houthi rebels in recent weeks.
Houthi military spokesperson Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree said the government forces had launched a total of 35 airstrikes on Houthi positions in the last 24 hours.
Earlier, Houthi-run Al-Masirah TV reported that at least 20 airstrikes had targeted different districts in Saada alone.
Over a hundred Israeli settlers scuffled with Israeli soldiers who were trying to escort a Palestinian man to his home in the West Bank village of Jalud.
The homeowner, Mahmoud Tubasi, told the AP that the soldiers initially brought him to his home but rioting settlers forced him to leave with his family in a military vehicle. He said he still can't access the house, which settlers have besieged for two months.
Israel’s military acknowledged that the overnight mission to return the family “was not completed” and said three officers were injured by settlers who threw rocks, blocked roads and set Palestinian property on fire.
Israeli police said they arrested three settlers suspected of participating in the riot, which was condemned by Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Foreign Minister Gidon Saar and President Isaac Herzog.
The Israeli military has struggled to quell the latest wave of settler violence. Rights groups have accused the military of colluding with the settlers.
Israeli strikes Tuesday in the Gaza Strip killed four people, including a Hamas commander, Palestinian and Israeli officials said.
A strike early Tuesday on an apartment west of Gaza City killed two people and wounded five others, officials at Shifa Hospital said.
Israel said the overnight strike targeted Izz al-Din Bik, a commander in the Hamas militant group. Israel Defense Forces said Bik was involved in plotting attacks and recruiting new members. Hamas released a statement confirming the death of al-Bik, claiming he was one of the main overseers of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on southern Israel, which killed over 1,200 people.
On Tuesday afternoon, an Israeli airstrike in the Jabaliya refugee camp north of the Gaza Strip killed one and injured several others, Gaza’s Health Ministry said. A separate strike at around the same time east of Gaza City killed another, officials at Shifa Hospital said.
Israel’s military did not immediately respond for comment on the afternoon strikes.
The deaths were the latest since a ceasefire took effect nearly a year ago.
This report will be updated throughout the day as new developments emerge.
An Iranian missile is displayed under the country's national flag in a military exhibition commemorating the anniversary of the start of the 1980-88 Iraq-Iran war at Baharestan Square, in Tehran, Monday, Sept. 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
Iranian missiles and banners showing portraits of the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, center, and the late armed forces commanders and nuclear scientists, who were killed in Israel and U.S. strikes, are displayed in a military exhibition commemorating the anniversary of the start of the 1980-88 Iraq-Iran war at Baharestan Square, in Tehran, Monday, Sept. 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
A crow sits on a drone displayed in a military exhibition commemorating the anniversary of the start of the 1980-88 Iraq-Iran war at Baharestan Square, in Tehran, Monday, Sept. 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
This image taken from video released by Al-Masirah TV, a channel run by Yemen's Houthi rebels, on Monday, Sept. 28, 2026, shows what the channel said were Houthi fighters and local residents searching through the rubble of a house following a strike by Saudi-backed forces in the town of Kadhah, in Taiz province, Yemen. (Al-Masirah TV via AP)
Iran's Revolutionary Guard spokesman Gen. Hossein Mohebbi speaks during a news conference in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
