A blind female Ethiopian lawyer has been named a joint winner of the 2017 Right Livelihood Award, also known as Sweden’s alternative Nobel Prize. The 35-year-old human rights lawyer Yetnebersh Nigussie was on Tuesday awarded 3 million Swedish crowns ($374,000) which will be shared among the three joint winners. Her parents enrolled her at the Catholic boarding school for girls with disabilities in the capital Addis Ababa where her life changed for the better, she narrated. Nigussie, who is also a senior advisor at a charity that promotes disability rights said education was her turning point in her life and she pushed to make a difference. She won the joint prize with Colin Gonsalves, an Indian human rights lawyer, and female journalist Khadija Ismayilova for revealing government corruption in Azerbaijan.

Source: Ethiopian News September 26, 2017 23:01 UTC