Canadian peacebuilder Dr. Alaa Murabit named 2026 WIN WIN Award laureate
Gothenburg, Sweden – Dr. Alaa Murabit has been named the 2026 WIN WIN Award laureate, receiving a prize of 1 million SEK. The international sustainability award has recognised trailblazing leaders working for a more sustainable world since 2000 — counting Gro Harlem Brundtland, Al Gore and Kofi Annan among its past laureates.
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The 2026 WIN WIN Award is given under the theme Gender-Equal Societies, which places gender equality at the centre of democratic resilience, sustainable development, and lasting peace. Each year, the award highlights a new theme within the framework of the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
WIN WIN Award: Alaa Murabit
Dr. Alaa Murabit has spent more than a decade reshaping how the world understands the relationship between gender equality and peace — forcing change in the rooms where decisions are made.
At 21, amid civil war, she founded Voice of Libyan Women, pioneering a faith-aligned approach to gender equity and security that has since shaped international peace-building efforts. Through the Noor Campaign, she mobilised religious and community leaders to actively reinterpret norms around women's rights and roles — drawing on Islamic texts as the basis for that argument. Human Rights Watch described her work as "a turning point in women's rights globally."
By her mid-twenties, she had briefed the UN Security Council and helped shape multiple resolutions advancing women's participation in peace and security processes. Her leadership was instrumental in shaping UN General Assembly Resolution 70/1 — better known as the Sustainable Development Goals — including the inclusion of Goal 16 on peaceful and inclusive societies, justice, and strong institutions. She was subsequently appointed a UN SDG Advocate by both Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and António Guterres and a UN High-Level Commissioner on Health, Employment, and Economic Growth.
In the years since, Murabit has continued to pioneer movement-creating approaches to peacebuilding, global health, and development finance — building institutions that channel community capital toward the women and children the system has long overlooked. As Global Director at the Gates Foundation, she created For Mama (now Every Pregnancy), a Muslim philanthropic collaborative for maternal health that has since mobilised over $125 million across three Ramadans. She also conceptualized and helped shape The Beginnings Fund, a $600 million collaborative for newborn and child survival. She currently serves as a Lancet-Georgetown Commissioner on Faith, Trust and Health, Board Chair of Girls Not Brides: The Global Partnership to End Child Marriage, and trustee of Women for Women International.
"Alaa Murabit has done something rare — she has changed not just what is possible, but how we think about what is possible. Her work shows that gender equality and peace are not parallel tracks but the same road. She has built that argument from the inside of communities, using the languages and frameworks those communities trust, and she has taken it all the way to the highest levels of international decision-making. In times like these, her work to include women in peacebuilding processes has never been more vital,” says Annie Hohlfält, Chair of the WIN WIN Award Jury
"When I started this work at twenty-one, in the middle of a war, I could not have imagined such recognition. What I knew then, and know more deeply now, is that peace and equality are never gifts handed down from above. They are built slowly and stubbornly in community, most often by the women the world overlooks. I accept this honour on behalf of every bridge-builder whose name will never be in a press release but whose courage made mine possible, and I share it with Julieta, whose generation will take this further than mine ever could," says Alaa Murabit, 2026 WIN WIN Award laureate
Dr. Alaa Murabit will receive the award at a ceremony in Gothenburg on 16 October 2026, as part of WIN WIN's annual programme of knowledge exchange, dialogue and international collaboration. The WIN WIN Award is presented alongside the WIN WIN Youth Award, which recognises outstanding changemakers aged 13 to 29. The 2026 WIN WIN Youth Award, carrying a prize of SEK 100,000, is awarded to Julieta Martínez, 22, from Chile.
For further information:
Lovisa Ralpher, Head of Communications
+46 73 925 50 89
lovisa.ralpher@winwinaward.org
Annie Hohlfält, Chair of the WIN WIN Award Jury
annie.hohlfalt@socialnordost.goteborg.se
+46733682832
About WIN WIN Gothenburg Sustainability Award
WIN WIN Gothenburg Sustainability Award is a Swedish non-profit organisation that has recognised outstanding efforts addressing pressing sustainability challenges since 2000. The international WIN WIN Award carries a prize of SEK 1,000,000 and is awarded annually in Gothenburg to an individual or organisation driving systemic change toward a more sustainable and just world. In 2018, WIN WIN established the WIN WIN Youth Award — a prize of SEK 100,000 for changemakers aged 13 to 29 worldwide. Beyond the award, WIN WIN is a platform for knowledge exchange, bringing together local and international perspectives through lectures, round-table discussions and collaborative projects across sectors. WIN WIN is based in Gothenburg, Sweden, and is supported by the City of Gothenburg, Västra Götaland Region, Chalmers University of Technology, University of Gothenburg, and a number of leading Swedish corporate partners.
