Senior Advocate And HRLN Founder Colin Gonsalves Awarded The ‘Alternate Nobel Prize’

Senior Advocate and HRLN founder, Mr. Colin Gonsalves, has been awarded the 2017 Right Livelihood Award, widely known as the ‘Alternative Nobel Prize’.

As per an official press release, Mr. Gonsalves has been endowed with the honor “for his tireless and innovative use of public interest litigation over three decades to secure fundamental human rights for India’s most marginalized and vulnerable citizens.”

Established in 1980, the Right Livelihood Award honours efforts that prize founder, Swedish-German philanthropist Jakob von Uexkull, felt were being ignored by the Nobel Prizes. Named after the Buddhist concept of Right Livelihood, the prize has been given in the past to former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, human rights activists Bianca Jagger from Nicaragua, and Swedish children's book author Astrid Lindgren.

The announcement was made at the International Press Centre at the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs by Ole von Uexkull, Executive Director of the Right Livelihood Award Foundation, and Maina Kiai, Jury member and former UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association.

Mr. Gonsalves graduated from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, but soon switched his career to law and enrolled at the Bar in 1982. He, along with his colleagues, started the People’s Law Centre in the mid 1980s, aiming to provide free legal aid. People’s Law Centre was renamed as Human Rights Law Network in 1989.

Since then, HRLN has grown into the leading public interest law group in India, with 200 lawyers and paralegals operating out of 28 offices across India. Over three decades, HRLN’s lawyers have engaged in public interest litigation to hold the government to account and secure a broad spectrum of human rights. Mr. Gonsalves’ clients have included India’s most vulnerable people, such as bonded laborers, ethnic and religious minorities, refugees, slum dwellers, marginalized women and the poor.