Front Line Defenders Award

Nominations for the 2024 Award are now open!

"[The Laureates] are a courageous and inspiring group of people who reflect the determination, dynamism and diversity of human rights defenders who are on the front lines of fighting for a more just world"

Olive Moore, Interim Director, 2023

Nominations for the 2024 Award are now open!

Each year Front Line Defenders holds an open nomination process for the Front Line Defenders Award for Human Rights Defenders at Risk.

The selection criteria include: the nature of human rights defender's work; the impact of human rights defender's work in advancing the rights of others; the level of risk or negative consequences associated with human rights defender's work; the continued commitment to advancing human rights, despite high level risks; and the potential impact of receiving the Award on the human rights defender and their work.

For more information and to nominate please visit the 2024 nomination information page:

CALL FOR NOMINATIONS - Front Line Defenders Award 2024

Nomination Guidelines:

Incomplete nominations will not be considered.
Nominations can be submitted by organisations or individuals.
Individual nominees may not play a prominent role in a political party.
Individual nominees must be currently active in human rights work (the Front Line Defenders Award is not intended to recognise a historical or posthumous contribution).
Individual nominees should not have previously been the recipient of high-profile international recognition.
Nominees should be active human rights defenders and if in exile, only nominations of HRDs still at risk will be eligible.
Self-nomination is not permitted.
The number of nominations a HRD or organisation receives is not considered when evaluating the nominees.

About the Award

The annual Front Line Defenders Award for Human Rights Defenders at Risk was established in 2005 to honour the work of HRDs who are courageously making outstanding contributions to the promotion and protection of the human rights of others, often at great personal risk to themselves.

The Award focuses international attention on the work and struggles of HRDs, providing a greater national and international platform to speak about and advocate for the human rights issues they are defending.

Laureates are selected from among scores of candidates which are put forward in a secure, public nomination process carried out towards the end of each year and Award winners are announced on the day of the Award Ceremony in Dublin usually in May the following year.

Laureates receive a modest financial prize, a protection grant and support from Front Line Defenders teams on digital and physical security, advocacy, visibility, well-being and more.

Irish parliamentary Patrons of the Award include: Senator Róisín Garvey, Charlie Flanagan TD, Cormac Devlin TD, Ivana Bacik TD, and Sean Crowe TD.