Human Rights Tulip

The Human Rights Tulip is an annual award to individuals or organisations that promote human rights worldwide in peaceful and innovative ways.

The Human Rights Tulip is an annual award of the Dutch government to individuals or organisations that promote human rights in peaceful ways. The Human Rights Tulip was established in 2008 and is intended to support human rights defenders and to help them learn from each other. From 2013, the focus has been on the innovative character of the work of human rights defenders.

The award

The award comes with €100,000 in prize money, which the winner can use to further develop or expand the scale of their work for human rights. In this way the prize benefits more people in more places. The prize money comes out of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Human Rights Fund. The winner also receives a bronze sculpture in the shape of a tulip, designed by the Dutch artists Huub and Adelheid Kortekaas.

Since 2018, selected Dutch embassies have also issued a Human Rights Tulip to a local human rights defender. In this way, ambassadors show that the Netherlands values the work done by local human rights defenders and sees it as important. The winners of Human Rights Tulips issued by embassies receive financial support to help them continue their work and a stainless steel sculpture in the form of a tulip.