Nazra for Feminist Studies director wins ‘alternative Nobel Prize’

Nazra for Feminist Studies Executive Director Mozn Hassan has been named as one of the winners of the 2016 Right Livelihood Award, an honor often referred to as the “alternative Nobel Prize.”

The Swedish Right Livelihood Award Foundation praised Hassan “for asserting the equality and rights of women in circumstances where they are subject to ongoing violence, abuse and discrimination,” in its statement announcing this year’s honorees, which include Russian human rights worker Svetlana Gannushkina, Syria’s White Helmets and the Turkish independent newspaper Cumhuriyet.

Hassan is the third Egyptian national to take home the award given to those offering practical solutions to global challenges across a range of issues and areas: human rights, education, sustainable development, ecology, peace and democracy, ensuring the rule of law and technological knowledge.

“I feel that the Right Livelihood award is not a recognition of my work or the work of Nazra. It is for every woman who struggles to get basic rights, for every woman who fought and survived sexual violence and for all women who are fighting everyday for their right to exist. We still believe in a better future for women in Egypt, in the region, and in the world,” Hassan is quoted as saying in the foundation’s statement.

Right Livelihood Award Foundation Executive Director Ole von Uexküll also praised Hassan, saying that her “work has paid off through her urging the Egyptian government to maintain the rights for women guaranteed in the 2014 Constitution, and through other actions. We hope to shed a light on the struggle for equal rights in Egypt – and the whole world – through a sustainable path.”

Hassan was unable to accept the award because she has been banned from travel due to an ongoing investigation into civil society organizations, what has become known as the foreign funding case. Hassan was summoned for interrogation on March 29 and remains a defendant, along with a number of prominent human rights workers and NGOs.

The Right Livelihood Award has been bestowed upon 167 people from 67 countries since the organization was founded.

Architect Hassan Fahty, known for making environmentally sustainable buildings, won one of the first prizes issued. Ibrahim Abouleish – a pharmacologist and the founder of the SEKEM initiative, a biodynamic farming research facility and practice in Egypt – won the prize in 2003.

The Right Livelihood Award Foundation was founded in 1980 by philanthropist and former politician Jakob von Uexküll, the grandson of biologist Jakob von Uexküll, after the Nobel Foundation rejected his suggestion to establish prizes in ecology and in a field relevant to the majority of the world’s poor. Uexküll provided the initial endowment by selling his postage stamp collection for US$1 million.