Criteria

• The award goes to an individual, not an organisation.

• The nominee should be a person who has demonstrated exceptional moral courage: a person who has faced the negative, personal consequences of his or her work or has accepted the risk of such consequences.

• To be eligible for nomination, the person must have opted to be actively engaged in protecting the human rights of a large group of people. Individuals who work for good causes in general (e.g. charity work) are not eligible.

• The nominee should have been working to defend human rights for some time. It should be a full-time occupation, not occasional work.

• It is also important that the person employ peaceful means in defending human rights.

• The nominee should be currently unknown/relatively unknown. The Dutch government aims to protect human rights defenders by bringing them out of anonymity.

• Nominees can be from any country.

• Individuals may not nominate themselves.

• Human rights defenders who have been previously nominated can be nominated again.