STOCKHOLM: A pioneering woman lawyer from Pakistan, a prominent AI researcher and two women-led rights groups on Wednesday received the Right Livelihood prize, dubbed an “alternative Nobel”.
The Sweden-based Right Livelihood Foundation honoured Pakistani human rights lawyer Jalila Haider “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”.
Advocate Jalila’s team “has won more than 600 cases, freeing activists and [human rights defenders] from frozen bank accounts, movement restrictions and state surveillance”, it said.
The citation noted that her seven-day hunger strike in 2018 forced the country’s army chief to negotiate directly with Hazara women — a first in the country’s history.
As a founding member of the Women’s Democratic Front (WDF), Right Livelihood noted, Advocate Jalila helped pioneer Balochistan’s first women’s march, a street mobilisation that sparked discussions on feminism across the deeply patriarchal region.
Her organisation ‘We the Humans’ has also helped over 400 widows of terrorism victims gain financial independence.
Despite detention, cyber-harassment and death threats, she continues working toward a world where, in her words, “no human being is illegal.”
Additionally, the jury said it had chosen US artificial intelligence researcher Timnit Gebru “for challenging concentrated power in artificial intelligence and pioneering digital technology rooted in justice, lived experience and human agency”.
Gebru is known for her work examining how biases influence AI and in 2017, she co-founded Black in AI.
Published in Dawn, October 1st, 2026
