Pakistani human rights lawyer Jalila Haider has received the 2026 Right Livelihood Award.
The award recognises her work defending persecuted and marginalised communities in Balochistan.
Haider’s law firm has handled more than 7,000 cases and helped remove 600 activists and human rights defenders from no-fly lists.
She became widely known after leading a 2018 hunger strike against the targeted killings of Hazaras.
Pakistani human rights lawyer Jalila Haider has received the 2026 Right Livelihood Award for her work defending persecuted and marginalised communities in Balochistan.
The Stockholm-based Right Livelihood organisation said Haider, the first female lawyer from Pakistan’s Hazara community, was being honoured for challenging ethnic, state and patriarchal persecution.
Haider has provided pro bono legal defence to minorities, refugees, transgender people, political activists and human rights defenders in Balochistan, one of Pakistan’s most volatile regions.
Her law firm has handled more than 7,000 cases described by the organisation as too risky or unprofitable for others to take on. It has also helped remove 600 human rights defenders and political activists from no-fly lists.
Haider, who was born in Quetta in 1984, became widely known in 2018 after leading a seven-day hunger strike demanding an end to targeted killings of Hazaras, a Shia Muslim minority that has faced sustained sectarian violence and segregation in Balochistan.
The protest forced Pakistan’s then army chief to meet her directly and pledge protection for the community, according to Right Livelihood. The organisation said it was the first time Hazara women’s protests received national-level engagement.
“Human rights are universal rights for everyone: child, woman, man, girl, or transgender, regardless of ethnicity,” Haider said in a press statement. “Even for those ethnicities that are sometimes involved in the persecution of my community, I cannot undermine their rights because they are universal. I choose them for everyone, even those who do wrong to me.”
Right Livelihood said Haider had continued her work despite repeated detention, cyber-harassment and death threats. Her name has twice been placed on Pakistan’s Exit Control List, and she survived a bomb blast in 2016 while mourning a law colleague who had been shot hours earlier on his way to court.
As a founding member of the Women’s Democratic Front, Haider helped organise Balochistan’s first Women’s March. Her organisation, We the Humans, has also helped more than 400 widows of terrorism victims gain financial independence.
Right Livelihood’s jury said Haider was being recognised “for breaking barriers” and for being guided by the belief that “no human being is illegal”.
The other 2026 laureates are the Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association, Rural Women’s Assembly and AI ethics researcher Timnit Gebru.
