Sudan humanitarian aid group among winners of Right Livelihood Award

The Sudanese Emergency Response Rooms network won the Right Livelihood Award on Wednesday for its role in providing humanitarian assistance in war-torn Sudan. 

The Swedish Right Livelihood Award Foundation also honoured activists from Myanmar, the Pacific Islands and Taiwan. 

The 2025 laureates distinguished themselves in their fight against climate change, disinformation, as well as military and political violence. They were chosen among 159 nominees from 67 countries this year. 

"As authoritarianism and division rise globally, the 2025 Right Livelihood Laureates are charting a different course: one rooted in collective action, resilience and democracy to create a livable future for all," the Stockholm-based foundation said about the winners.

Sudan's Emergency Response Rooms is a community-led initiative that emerged from resistance committees involved in the 2019 Sudanese revolution.

The network has been instrumental in providing aid in areas that many international organisations cannot reach.

It "has become the backbone of the country's humanitarian response amid war, displacement and state collapse," the foundation's executive director Ole von Uexküll said.

The youth-led organisation Pacific Island Students Fighting Climate Change and Julian Aguon were also awarded the prize “for carrying the call for climate justice to the world’s highest court, turning survival into a matter of rights and climate action into a legal responsibility."

Justice for Myanmar was awarded “for their courage and their pioneering investigative methods in exposing and eroding the international support to Myanmar’s corrupt military." The covert group of activists is working to expose the financial architecture and global corporate complicity sustaining the military government, Right Livelihood said.

Audrey Tang from Taiwan won the prize “for advancing the social use of digital technology to empower citizens, renew democracy and heal divides." Tang is a “civic hacker and technologist who rewires systems for the public good,” the organisation said.

The annual Right Livelihood Award was created in 1980 in Sweden and is known as the alternative Nobel Prize. 

Previous winners include Swedish climate activst Greta Thunberg, Kenyan environmental activist Phyllis Omido and Congolese gynecologist Denis Mukwege.