21 Apr 2026
DR. ALAA MURABIT AND JULIETA MARTÍNEZ NAMED 2026 LAUREATES
Alaa Murabit receives the WIN WIN Award and Julieta Martínez the WIN WIN Youth Award on the 2026 theme Gender-Equal Societies.
The recipient of this year's WIN WIN Gothenburg Sustainability Award is Dr. Alaa Murabit, a physician and peacebuilder who has spent more than a decade reshaping how the world understands the relationship between gender equality and peace — from founding Voice of Libyan Women amid civil war at 21, to helping shape the UN Sustainable Development Goals and mobilising over $125 million for maternal health globally. Meanwhile, 22-year-old Julieta Martínez from Chile is awarded the WIN WIN Youth Award for founding Tremendas at the age of 15 — a platform now active in 18 countries that equips young women with the tools, training and networks to lead on climate, gender equality and sustainable development. The laureates were announced at the Gothenburg Sustainability Summit on 21 April, where over 300 leaders from the public sector, academia, and business gathered to explore the role of leadership in sustainable and peaceful development.
ALAA MURABIT – RECIPIENT OF THE WIN WIN AWARD 2026
For her transformative leadership at the intersection of gender equality, peacebuilding and global health, Dr. Alaa Murabit is awarded the WIN WIN Gothenburg Sustainability Award 2026.
At 21, amid civil war in Libya, 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, 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 the inclusion of Goal 16 — on peaceful and inclusive societies, justice, and strong institutions — in UN General Assembly Resolution 70/1, better known as the Sustainable Development Goals. She was subsequently appointed a UN SDG Advocate by both Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and António Guterres.
As Global Director at the Gates Foundation, she created For Mama (now Every Pregnancy), a Muslim philanthropic collaborative for maternal health that has mobilised over $125 million across three Ramadans, and helped shape The Beginnings Fund, a $600 million collaborative for newborn and child survival. She currently serves as 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,
- 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.
- Alaa Murabit, 2026 WIN WIN Award laureate.
JULIETA MARTÍNEZ – RECIPIENT OF THE WIN WIN YOUTH AWARD 2026
For her trailblazing work connecting gender equality and climate justice through youth leadership, Julieta Martínez is awarded the WIN WIN Youth Award 2026.
At just 15, she founded Tremendas — a global platform now active in 18 countries through which young women gain the tools, training and networks to lead initiatives across seven action areas linked to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, including climate, gender equality, education and health.
In 2021, she launched the climate academy Climáticas, which has since trained and mobilised 740 young women from Latin America to become agents of change. She has also served on UN Women's Generation Equality Youth Task Force, contributing to the integration of youth voices into the Beijing+25 convention, and currently serves as an active member of the UN Women Leaders Network.
In a world where women represent the majority of those most severely affected by climate change, yet remain a minority in the rooms where climate policy is shaped, Martínez has made it her mission to close that gap — building a digitally anchored, low-threshold model that can be adapted across regions without losing its focus on local leadership.
Through Tremendas, Julieta Martínez has given young women and girls — too often rendered invisible in the spaces where power is exercised and the future is shaped — the tools and community to transform frustration and anxiety about the climate crisis into real drive for change. She makes it clear that gender equality and climate justice are inseparable, and that young women's leadership is an absolute prerequisite for a sustainable future. With this award, the jury wishes to honour Julieta Martínez's ability to make climate activism accessible and hopeful, and to move more people from placards to action.
- Johan Holmen, Chair of the WIN WIN Youth Award jury.
This recognition is deeply meaningful to me because it reinforces something I strongly believe: in contexts like Latin America, advancing gender equality is not about charity or pity, but about reshaping the way we understand power and who gets to lead. Girls and young women are too often seen only as victims of the crises that affect them — from climate change to migration to political instability — when in reality, they are already active agents of change within their communities. We need to reshape the narrative, one where they tell their own stories and write their own futures.
- Julieta Martínez, 2026 WIN WIN Youth Award laureate.
Learn more about Julieta Martínez
During WIN WIN Week, 12–16 October, the laureates will come to Gothenburg to share their knowledge through various activities. The week concludes with the gala evening on 16 October, where they will receive their awards.