Pakistani Rights Activist Among Winners of 'Alternative Nobel' Prize

AI Researcher and Women-Led Groups Also Recognized With Right Livelihood Award

A Pakistani human rights lawyer, a leading artificial intelligence researcher, and two women-led rights organizations have been honored with the Right Livelihood Award, often called the "alternative Nobel Prize."

The winners were announced Wednesday in Stockholm by the Right Livelihood Foundation.

Jalila Haider, a lawyer from Pakistan, received the award for her work fighting for the Hazara community. She is the first female lawyer from her community. The jury praised her for taking on ethnic, state, and patriarchal persecution. Her work is guided by the belief that no human being is illegal.

The foundation also recognized Timnit Gebru, an AI researcher from the United States. Gebru has spent years studying how bias affects artificial intelligence systems. In 2017, she co-founded Black in AI, a group working to increase diversity in the field.

In 2020, while working as co-lead of Google's Ethical AI team, Gebru co-wrote a paper about the risks of bias in large language models. According to the jury, Google asked her to either withdraw the paper or remove her name from it. When she refused to do so without certain guarantees, she was fired.

After leaving Google, Gebru started the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (DAIR). The group works to challenge the concentration of power in the tech industry. It also exposes the harm AI systems cause in everyday life, especially for communities that already face discrimination.

The Rural Women's Assembly also received the prize. This grassroots movement brings together more than 178,000 small-scale farmers from 11 countries in Southern Africa. The jury honored the group for uniting rural women in the fight to protect land, seed, and bodily autonomy against corporate and patriarchal forces.

The Georgian Young Lawyers' Association (GYLA) was the fourth winner. The jury called it Georgia's oldest and most well-known human rights organization. Founded in 1994 by volunteer lawyers, GYLA has been described as the moral compass of Georgian society. It was honored for its work building and protecting democracy in Georgia, even as the country faces an autocratic crackdown.

The Right Livelihood Award was started in 1980. Swedish-German stamp collector Jakob von Uexkull sold part of his collection to fund it. He created the award after the foundation behind the Nobel Prizes refused to add new categories for the environment and international development.