Petra Karin Kelly was a German Green politician and ecofeminist activist. She was a founding member of the German Green Party, the first Green party to rise to prominence both nationally in Germany and worldwide. In 1982, she was awarded the Right Livelihood Award for "forging and implementing a new vision uniting ecological concerns with disarmament, social justice and human rights."
The Right Livelihood Award is an international award to "honour and support those offering practical and exemplary answers to the most urgent challenges facing us today." The prize was established in 1980 by German-Swedish philanthropist Jakob von Uexkull, and is presented annually in early December. An international jury, invited by the five regular Right Livelihood Award board members, decides the awards in such fields as environmental protection, human rights, sustainable development, health, education, and peace. The prize money is shared among the winners, usually numbering four, and is €200,000. Very often one of the four laureates receives an honorary award, which means that the other three share the prize money.
Bianca Jagger is a Nicaraguan social and human rights advocate and a former actress. Jagger currently serves as a Council of Europe goodwill ambassador, founder and chair of the Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation, member of the Executive Director's Leadership Council of Amnesty International USA, and a trustee of the Amazon Charitable Trust.
Myrna Mack Chang was a Guatemalan anthropologist. In 1990, she was stabbed to death by elements in the Guatemalan military due to her criticism of the Guatemala government's treatment of the indigenous Maya, and human rights abuses against the people in general.
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is an American historian, writer, professor, and activist based in San Francisco. Born in Texas, she grew up in Oklahoma and is a social justice and feminist activist. She has written numerous books including Blood on the Border: A Memoir of the Contra Years (2005), Red Dirt: Growing up Okie (1992), and An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States (2014). She is professor emeritus in Ethnic Studies at California State University.
Davi Kopenawa Yanomami, name also written Davi Kobenawä Yanomamö, is a Yanomami shaman and Portuguese-speaking spokesperson for the Yanomami People in Brazil. He became known for his advocacy regarding tribal issues and Amazon rainforest conservation when the tribal rights organization Survival International invited him to accept the Right Livelihood Award on its behalf in 1989. In 2019, Yanomami and the Hutukara Yanomami Association were also awarded the Right Livelihood Award. Yanomami spoke to both the British and Swedish parliaments about the catastrophic impact on Yanomami health as a consequence of the illegal invasion of their land by 40,000 ‘garimpeiros’ or goldminers. Prince Charles publicly called the situation ‘genocide’. In a seven-year period from 1987 to 1993 one fifth of the Yanomami died from malaria and other diseases transmitted by the miners.
Dr. Hanumappa Sudarshan is an Indian social worker and tribal rights activist. He is known for his contributions to the upliftment of the forest dwelling tribes in the Chamarajanagar district of Karnataka. He is also a recipient of the Right Livelihood Award and the Padma Shri.
Bryan Stevenson is an American lawyer, social justice activist, law professor at New York University School of Law, and the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative. Based in Montgomery, Alabama, he has challenged bias against the poor and minorities in the criminal justice system, especially children. He has helped achieve United States Supreme Court decisions that prohibit sentencing children under 18 to death or to life imprisonment without parole. He has assisted in cases that have saved dozens of prisoners from the death penalty, advocated for the poor, and developed community-based reform litigation aimed at improving the administration of criminal justice.
Helen Beatriz Mack Chang is a Guatemalan businesswoman and human rights activist. She became an outspoken advocate for human rights after her sister, anthropologist Myrna Mack Chang, was assassinated by the Guatemalan military on 11 September 1990. She pursued prosecution of her sister's assailants, including ground-breaking cases in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, achieving convictions of one assailant and a high-ranking colonel. The Guatemalan government acknowledged responsibility in 2004 and has paid compensation to Mack and her family.
Evaristo Nugkuag Ikanan is a Peruvian activist for environmental and indigenous people causes. He is a member of the Aguaruna people. He organized the Alliance of the Indian Peoples of the Peruvian Amazon (AIDESEP) and Coordinadora de las Organizaciones Indígenas de la Cuenca Amazónica "COICA" to serve indigenous people. In 1986, he was awarded the Right Livelihood Award for "organising to protect the rights of the Indians of the Amazon basin."
Stephen Corry is a British indigenous rights activist, better known as the former CEO of Survival International. He was asked to lead the organisation in 1984. In 1993 he became the chairman of the Free Tibet Campaign and remains on its board.
Svetlana Alekseevna Gannushkina is a mathematician and human rights activist in Russia who was reported to have been a serious contender for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize.
Ales Viktaravich Bialiatski is a Belarusian pro-democracy activist and prisoner of conscience known for his work with the Viasna Human Rights Centre. An activist for Belarusian independence and democracy since the early 1980s, Bialiatski is a founding member of Viasna and the Belarusian Popular Front, serving as leader of the latter from 1996 to 1999. He is also a member of the Coordination Council of the Belarusian opposition. He has been called "a pillar of the human rights movement in Eastern Europe" by The New York Times, and recognised as a prominent pro-democracy activist in Belarus.
Guo Jianmei is a Chinese lawyer, human rights activist and director of a women's legal aid NGO. In 2005, she was one of 1000 women put forward as nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize. Guo is the recipient of the 2010 Simone De Beauvoir Prize and the International Women of Courage Award in 2011. She received the Right Livelihood Award in 2019. She is married to writer Liu Zhenyun.
Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera is a Ugandan LGBT rights activist and the founder and executive director of the LGBT rights organization Freedom & Roam Uganda (FARUG). She received the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders in 2011 and the Right Livelihood Award in 2015.
Myrna Kay Cunningham Kain is a Miskito feminist, indigenous rights activist and medical surgeon from Nicaragua. She has participated in political-social processes linked to the struggle for the rights of women and indigenous peoples in Latin America. She has been coordinator of the Indigenous Chair of the Intercultural Indigenous University.
Human rights in Nicaragua refer to personable, political and social rights granted to every human in Nicaragua. Nicaragua derives its understanding of human rights from the Constitution of Nicaragua and international law. Nicaragua is a member state of the United Nations which states that fundamental human rights, such as freedom from slavery and freedom of expression, are enabled for all human beings without discrimination.
Vilma Núñez de Escorcia is a Nicaraguan lawyer and human-rights activist. Born to a single mother, she developed an early concern for social justice. As an undergraduate studying law at National Autonomous University of Nicaragua in León, she met future senior government officials Carlos Tünnerman and Sergio Ramírez, and became one of the survivors of the 23 July 1959 student massacre by the Somoza National Guard. She joined the Sandinista National Liberation Front around 1975 and in 1979 was imprisoned and tortured by the Somoza regime. She was freed days before the FSLN insurrection succeeded on 19 July 1979. When they took power, she served as vice-president of the Supreme Court of Justice, then as director of the National Commission for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights.
Marthe Wandou is a Cameroonian lawyer and women's rights activist.
Freda Huson, Chief Howilhkat of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation in Canada, is an Indigenous rights activist for the Wet'suwet'en people. She is wing-chief of the Wet’suwet’en's Dark House Clan. Huson established the Uni’stot’en healing camp on the land that became the federally recognized territory of the Wet’suwet’en Nation. She is a leader in the opposition against the construction of pipelines. Since 2010, she has lived on her ancestral lands in Talbeetskwa in British Columbia with her children.
