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Women's Rights

“Our hope is to redress restrictive laws and customs that deprive women not only of their human rights, but also of their ability to enrich the human condition.”

Peter Gruber, Chairman Emeritus
The Gruber Foundation

The Women’s Rights Prize honors individuals who have made significant contributions to human rights that advance the rights of women and girls around the world.

To stifle even a single segment of a population is to shortchange the whole of humanity; to help liberate that segment is to contribute to universal human progress.

The Women’s Rights Prize, established in 2003 and awarded annually, is a gold medal and unrestricted cash award of $500,000 that honors courageous efforts to help achieve gender equality.

2011 marks the final Women’s Rights Prize of The Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation, which prepares to move to Yale University, where the mission of its two human rights prizes will merge and transition in 2012 into the Gruber Program for Global Justice and Women’s Rights. For more information, see the official press release.

The Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation presents the 2011 Women's Rights Prize to AVEGA Agahozo, an association of genocide widows in Rwanda which has, through strategies of advocacy, legal aid, health care, housing, trauma counseling and income generation, restored the dignity of thousands of women survivors.

The Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation presents the 2010 Women’s Rights Prize to The Center for Reproductive Rights and The Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defense of Women's Rights for their historic collaboration in advancing women's sexual and reproductive rights and successfully holding governments accountable for complying with international treaties and standards on women's rights.