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.”
“With the 2026 laureates we honor four shining examples of building power on cooperation, not on violence, so that everyone’s rights are respected and every voice is heard,” von Uexkull said as he presented the awards to the recipients. “We believe that this kind of collective power is the key to averting global crises, that a few ultra rich people profit from, while everybody else stands to lose.”
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)
NEW YORK (AP) — Kayla Harrison draped her left arm around a member of her team and gingerly walked out of the octagon a winner, a champion — but with a major career decision ahead.
Harrison, a former MMA champion at 155 pounds, endured the arduous, often unhealthy process of cutting to 135 pounds for her dream fight against Amanda Nunes.
The 36-year-old Harrison also fought Saturday for the first time in 18 months following spinal fusion surgery in January for a neck injury that delayed this anticipated fight until UFC 334 at Madison Square Garden. She said she even might have suffered a broken foot in the fight.
How much more can Harrison — a two-time Olympic judo gold medalist — push herself to prove what, exactly?
“I am going to go back and talk to my team,” Harrison said. “I'm going to take my time and be with my kids. Get through the holidays. I get to have the holidays with my kids and actually eat and not be sweaty or hungry.”
With a resume that already has her in the UFC Hall of Fame, Nunes may be considered the greatest female fighter of all time.
Harrison staked her claim as the best of right now.
Harrison (20-1) can state that after she choked out Nunes in the fourth round in the co-main event and made the most of her first title defense at 135 pounds.
(Ciryl Gane successfully defended his heavyweight championship, sweeping the scorecards 48-47 over the five-round fight to win a unanimous decision and beat Josh Hokit in the main event of UFC 334 ).
Nunes (23-6) tried to wrestle with Harrison and ended the first two rounds flat on her back. Harrison landed a series of short punches and elbows to the head that seemed to tire her out, the weight cut wearing her out as much as they damaged Nunes.
Harrison — who walked out to “Eye of the Tiger” while the fighter better known as the “Lioness” stretched and bounced on her tiptoes ahead of Bruce Buffer’s introductions — wasted no time in the fourth round. Harrison grabbed Nunes by her right leg and tripped her to the canvas. Harrison pounced on Nunes’ back and applied the rear naked choke hold. Nunes quickly tapped to the astonishment of 19,740 fans at a sold-out MSG.
“I think I’m still in shock,” Harrison said.
Despite the anguish of injuries accumulated throughout her decorated mixed martial arts career, Harrison could still see the light. She had a reason to keep rehabbing: not only to make it to the biggest fight of her career, but to compete in a matchup that stood as one of the most hyped women’s fights in UFC history.
She’s used to proving she’s a champion at the highest level, from the Olympics to the cage, leaving only destruction in her wake.
No U.S. judoka — man or woman — had won an Olympic gold medal before Harrison beat Britain’s Gemma Gibbons in the women’s 78-kilogram-and-under division at the 2012 London Olympics. She won gold again four years later at the Rio de Janeiro Games and made her MMA debut in 2018.
Through it all, Harrison has been open about the years of physical and mental abuse inflicted by a former coach leading into the Olympics. She was victimized as a teen, revealing she even thought of quitting judo and of taking her own life. Harrison turned to her deep faith — “I trust God” — that has steadied her along the way, and she wrote a book about recognizing and overcoming trauma.
She raised the issue in her championship interview with announcer Joe Rogan in large part because she has turned into an advocate for survivors of abuse. Harrison speaks out candidly and without shame about her experience.
“Sometimes I can't believe my life,” Harrison said. “I was sexually abused at a young age and statistically, I'm not supposed to be here. So to go from that, if you told me at 6 years old this would be my life, at 16 years old, this would be my life, I wouldn't believe you. I'm just grateful.”
Harrison and Nunes were once training partners at American Top Team. Harrison was new to professional MMA in 2018 after her Olympic career ended and believed she had found a friend and a mentor in camp with Nunes. Nunes, already an established star, saw Harrison as a future star and rival and kept her distance from the hot new prospect who seemed destined for MMA stardom.
“I feel grateful for Amanda,” Harrison said. “She's a worthy opponent.”
Nunes bolted from the cage and could head back into retirement. She retired in 2023, citing burnout and a desire to spend more time with her wife as they raised their two young daughters.
Her legacy as one of the best to ever do it remains secure.
Harrison might not catch Nunes in terms of career accomplishments.
She doesn’t have to. She has the win.
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Brazil's Amanda Nunes, left, punches Kayla Harrison during a women's bantamweight title bout at the UFC 334 mixed martial arts event Saturday, Nov. 14, 2026 in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
Ciryl Gane, of France,punches Josh Hokit, left, during a heavyweight title bout at the UFC 334 mixed martial arts event Sunday, Nov. 15, 2026 in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
Kayla Harrison, left, grapples with Brazil's Amanda Nunes during a women's bantamweight title bout at the UFC 334 mixed martial arts event Saturday, Nov. 14, 2026 in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
Kayla Harrison, left, knees Brazil's Amanda Nunes during a women's bantamweight title bout at the UFC 334 mixed martial arts event Saturday, Nov. 14, 2026 in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
Kayla Harrison, left, punches Brazil's Amanda Nunes during a women's bantamweight title bout at the UFC 334 mixed martial arts event Saturday, Nov. 14, 2026 in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
