The United Nations is accepting nominations for the 2025 United Nations Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela Prize until 28 February 2025.

This prize is given out only every five years. It acknowledges individuals who dedicate their lives to the service of humanity, by promoting the purposes and principles of the United Nations. It also honours Nelson Mandela’s legacy of reconciliation, political transition and social transformation.

Two individuals - a woman and a man from different geographic regions – will be selected by a United Nations committee chaired by the President of the General Assembly and representatives of six Member States, plus five eminent advisers. The United Nations Department of Global Communications serves as the committee’s secretariat.

The award ceremony will be in New York at the annual commemoration for Nelson Mandela Day on 18 July.

The laureates in 2020 were Marianna V. Vardinoyannis, a Greek philanthropist and world advocate for human rights and the protection of children’s health and welfare, who is also a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Goodwill Ambassador; and Morissanda Kouyaté, a leading advocate from Guinea on ending violence against women and girls in Africa.

In 2015, the Prize recognized Dr. Helena Ndume of Namibia, an ophthalmologist whose life’s work has been the treatment of blindness and eye-related illnesses in Namibia and throughout the developing world; and former President of Portugal Jorge Fernando Branco Sampaio, a leader in the struggle for the restoration of democracy in his country.

Online nominations for the prize will be accepted until the deadline of 28 February 2025.