Alaa
Murabit
For more than a decade, Dr. Alaa Murabit has driven and reshaped how the world understands the link between gender equality and peacebuilding. As founder of Voice of Libyan Women, she pioneered a faith-aligned approach that united religious and community leaders to reinterpret norms around women's rights, inspiring movements far beyond Libya. For her bridge-building leadership and impact at the intersection of gender equality and peacebuilding, she receives the 2026 WIN WIN Award.
Recipient of the WIN WIN Award 2026
"When I started this work at 21, 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."
- Dr. Alaa Murabit, 2026
THE BACKGROUND
Dr. Alaa Murabit grew up in Canada and came from a Libyan family in which girls were encouraged to take on leadership roles alongside boys. But when she returned to Libya as a teenager, she witnessed something striking: women were largely absent from the decisions shaping the country's future. Determined to change this, she began speaking out and organising for women's leadership in peace and security, convinced that lasting peace could not be built without women at the table.
WORK AND IMPACT
Dr. Alaa Murabit has spent more than a decade reshaping how the world understands the relationship between gender equality and peace — forcing change in the rooms where decisions are made.
When Alaa was 21, during Libya's civil war, she founded The Voice of Libyan Women to make women's participation a central pillar of peace and security, mobilise women, and build networks. Through initiatives such as the Noor Campaign, she mobilised religious and community leaders to actively reinterpret norms around women's rights and roles — 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 shaping UN General Assembly Resolution 70/1 — better known as the Sustainable Development Goals — including Goal 16 on peaceful and inclusive societies, justice, and strong institutions. She was subsequently appointed a UN SDG Advocate by both Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and António Guterres and a UN High-Level Commissioner on Health, Employment, and Economic Growth.
In the years since, Murabit has continued to pioneer movement-creating approaches to peacebuilding, global health, and development finance — building institutions that channel community capital toward the women and children the system has long overlooked. As Global Director at the Gates Foundation, she created For Mama (now Every Pregnancy), a Muslim philanthropic collaborative for maternal health that has since mobilised over $125 million across three Ramadans.
Murabit also conceptualised and helped shape The Beginnings Fund, a $600 million collaborative for newborn and child survival. She currently serves as a Lancet-Georgetown Commissioner on Faith, Trust and Health, 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