Bangladesh’s Runa Khan has received the 2026 Ramon Magsaysay Award, widely known as the 'Nobel Prize of Asia'.
She is the founder and executive director of the non-governmental organisation Friendship.
This year’s other recipients are Singaporean diplomat Tommy Koh and Myanmar human rights activist Bo Kyi.
The Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation announced the winners of the 2026 edition of the award on Monday in the Philippines capital Manila. The award is named after the seventh president of the Philippines and is awarded on his birthday.
Runa Khan founded Friendship in 2002. According to the organisation’s website, Friendship is an international Social Purpose Organisation guided by a vision of a world where people-especially the hard-to-reach and unaddressed-have equal opportunities to live with dignity and hope.
The awards will officially be presented to the winners at a ceremony at the Metropolitan Theater in Manila on November 15.
Ramon Magsaysay was the seventh president of the Philippines, and the award is named after him.
He died in a tragic plane crash on 17 March 1957. The Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation was established later that year, and the awards were first presented in 1958.
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