Raji Sourani
The 2026 International Hrant Dink Award was presented to Palestinian human rights lawyer Raji Sourani for his work documenting human rights violations and pursuing accountability despite immense challenges. Turkish activist Süheyla Doğan also received the award for her defence of environmental and women’s rights.
Raji Sourani is a Palestinian HRD lawyer who has defended and promoted human rights in Palestine and the Middle East and North Africa region for decades. As one of the most prominent human rights lawyer based in the Gaza Strip, Sourani established the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) to document and investigate human rights violations committed under Israeli occupation and has defended countless victims before Israeli courts. It is thanks to the work of the PCHR and other human right organisations that the International Criminal Court ruled in 2021 that it has jurisdiction over the Palestinian Territories occupied by Israel.
Human rights defenders in the OPT are subjected to acts of harassment, restrictions on freedom of movement, stigmatisation, abductions, long periods of arbitrary detention usually under administrative detention orders, illegal searches of their homes and offices and killings. Many of the violations are state-sanctioned, or if not sanctioned at the highest levels of the Israeli political and military establishment, then condoned by the ongoing policy of impunity which permeates the military and judicial system in relation to the OPT. In some instances Israeli settlers have also been the perpetrators of violence against human rights defenders.
