Announcement: HRDF awarded 2023 Aachen Peace Prize

To our vast community of friends, supporters, and fellow human rights defenders…

Watch our acceptance speech, delivered by HRDF’s Executive Director Omri Metzer and Board member Meisa Irshaid, at the Aachen Peace Prize ceremony in September 2023.

We are proud and humbled to share with you that the Human Rights Defenders Fund has been awarded the esteemed Aachen Peace Prize for 2023.

In September of 2023, we travelled to Aachen, Germany, to accept this award alongside the radical and visionary Feminist Anti-War Resistance organization, an underground collective of activists protesting the authoritarianism, militarism, and patriarchy of the Russian state.

But this award is not just for us. It is for the tens of thousands of human rights defenders on the ground fighting fiercely and courageously for justice every day between the river and the sea.

It is for those who believe in solidarity across struggles, who choose people-power over armies, who choose humanity over ideology. It is for those who live lives of total resistance, who put themselves on the front lines, who risk their safety and wellbeing every single day in order to reject oppression and state violence.

It is for those who dare to demand a better world, and who commit everything that they are to the fight for human rights for all people, because they know there is no other choice.

But this award is not just for us. It is for the tens of thousands of human rights defenders on the ground fighting fiercely and courageously for justice every day between the river and the sea.

It is for those who believe in solidarity across struggles, who choose people-power over armies, who choose humanity over ideology. It is for those who live lives of total resistance, who put themselves on the front lines, who risk their safety and wellbeing every single day in order to reject oppression and state violence.

It is for those who dare to demand a better world, and who commit everything that they are to the fight for human rights for all people, because they know there is no other choice.

To our fellow human rights defenders: We are in awe of you. You inspire us, you light a fire inside of us, you make us believe there is a different kind of world that we can achieve together. For that, we say: Thank you.

Since our founding in 2011, until today, our promise to the human rights community in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories has never wavered. As we declared in our acceptance speech, and as we repeat here:

“ If people are going to put themselves on the front lines and risk themselves, their safety, and their lives for justice, we need them to know – no matter what happens out there, we will have them covered.

From the thousands of people who have received legal support and representation from us over the past twelve years since our founding, to the thousands of people who have been educated by our trainings, we hope that the human rights community from the river to the sea knows that no matter what, we’ve got their backs.“

In our acceptance speech, we called upon the international community to mobilize the political will to demand that the Israeli state adhere to international human rights law, and cease its criminalization of human rights defenders.

Our demand is more salient now than ever. We implore the international community: leverage your resources, leverage your diplomacy, and leverage your funds, so that the Israeli state takes our calls to respect human rights seriously. If the principles of the Fourth Geneva Convention are applied only when convenient, and Israel is never held accountable to them, those principles lose all meaning.

We want to thank our invaluable partners, whose support means the world to us and without whom we would not be able to continue with this urgent and necessary work. We extend particular gratitude to Kurve Wustrow, who submitted us for consideration for this prize, and who have backed us wholeheartedly for years. We could not do this without the unwavering solidarity of every single person who has donated to us, advocated for us, campaigned on our behalf, and championed our work. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

During a time in which threats on the human rights community abound, and we face an extremist government that has made it its mission to crush political dissidents violently and with no remorse, we need your help now more than ever.

We are honored that the international community and the Aachen Peace Prize committee has recognized the urgency of our work. As we carry this honor back to the frontlines of the struggle, we hope you will continue to stand with us, and with all human rights defenders, to ensure a future in which peace, justice, and freedom are not just words on a paper, but are the reality for all people.

In gratitude and solidarity,

The HRDF team