Justice For Myanmar gets 2025 Right Livelihood Award for exposing Junta finance
Guwahati: Justice For Myanmar (JFM), an anonymous collective of Myanmar activists, has been awarded the prestigious 2025 Right Livelihood Award for its courageous and pioneering work to dismantle the financial and corporate networks sustaining the country’s military junta.
The Stockholm-based Right Livelihood Foundation honoured JFM "for their courage and their pioneering investigative methods in exposing and eroding the international support to Myanmar’s corrupt military." This marks the first time the 45-year-old award, often referred to as the 'Alternative Nobel Prize,' has been bestowed upon a recipient from Myanmar.
Operating covertly due to "extreme security risks", JFM uses forensic research to "follow the money," uncovering arms deals, offshore assets, and the complicity of global companies, investors, and governments in enabling repression and human rights abuses by the junta, which seized power in a 2021 coup. Their exposés have catalysed global accountability, leading to sanctions, divestments, and criminal probes across multiple jurisdictions.
The collective was founded in 2019 following the military’s campaign of genocide against the Rohingya and has become a vital force in the Spring Revolution, the nationwide resistance movement.
Right Livelihood’s Executive Director, Ole von Uexkull, praised the laureates as an "innovative model of courageous and strategic activism for peace and democracy," noting their powerful investigative force "shakes the very foundations of the Myanmar military’s impunity.”
Accepting the award, Justice For Myanmar spokesperson Yadanar Maung stated the recognition belongs to the countless people of Myanmar who have lost their lives resisting the junta’s brutality, and to those who continue to oppose the military with extraordinary courage.
“Receiving this award is a powerful reminder that the world has not forgotten the Myanmar people’s struggle for federal democracy, peace, and justice,” the statement read.
The award comes as the junta intensifies its campaign of terror, including indiscriminate airstrikes and the systematic burning of villages, in preparation for a widely condemned "sham election" scheduled for December 2025. Critics view the planned vote as a futile attempt to legitimise the military's unlawful rule.
Both JFM and the Right Livelihood Foundation called for urgent global action, demanding governments reject the junta’s sham election and impose coordinated, targeted sanctions to cut the flow of funds, arms, equipment, and aviation fuel that sustain the military’s terror campaign.
JFM is recognised alongside fellow 2025 laureates, including Audrey Tang (Taiwan), the Emergency Response Rooms (Sudan), and Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change and Julian Aguon (Pacific Islands). The Right Livelihood Award is given annually to change-makers offering practical solutions for a more just, peaceful, and sustainable world.