Dw.De: Pakistani activist Asma Jahangir is one of the five winners of this year’s “alternative Nobel prize.” Jahangir talks to DW about the threats she faces for defending and promoting human rights in the Islamic Republic.
Pakistani human rights activist and lawyer Asma Jahangir is to receive this year’s Right Livelihood Award – also called the “alternative Nobel prize” – along with US whistleblower Edward Snowden, British journalist Alan Rusbridger, Sri Lankan rights activist Basil Fernando, and US environmentalist Bill McKibben.
The Sweden-based award “honors courageous and effective work for human rights, freedom of the press, civil liberties and combating climate change,” according to a statement released by the Right Livelihood Award committee on Wednesday, September 24.
Created in 1980, the annual award acknowledges efforts that its founder Jacob von Uexkull felt were being ignored by the Nobel Prizes. The winners have been invited to the December 1 award ceremony in Stockholm.
Jahangir is the first Pakistani to have won the prestigious award. The lawyer is the country’s leading human rights activist and former president of the Supreme Court Bar Association of the nuclear-armed South Asian nation. She is also the former chairperson of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, a non-governmental rights-based organization, and has worked with the United Nations as Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief.
Categories: Asia, Human Rights, Pakistan
Asma Jahangir, Well Done. Prize Mubarak.
Asma Jahangir is a life long human rights worker. Congratulations! I hope she will get the real Nobel Prize too.