Ahmed Mansoor, an Emirati human rights activist, has been named the 2015 winner of Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders. This award is often dubbed the Nobel prize for human rights. Since 2006, Mansoor has been campaigned for freedom of expression and greater political and civil rights in the United Arab Emirates. Mr Mansoor could not collect the award in Geneva because of a travel ban.

Mr Mansoor was selected as one of the human rights defenders nominated for the award by a jury of 10 global human rights organisations. The other nominees were Asmaou Diallo of Guinea and Robert Sann Aung of Myanmar.

Mr Mansoor and four other activists who called for democratic rights in the UAE were arrested and jailed in 2011 on the charge of “insulting officials”. Although pardoned and released later that year, he was banned from travel and had his passport confiscated.

The Martin Ennals Award

• The Martin Ennals Award is named after the late British lawyer who became the first head of the human rights organisation, Amnesty International.
• The Martin Ennals award was created in 1993, two years after Ennals died.
• Its jury is composed of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the International Commission of Jurists and seven other international campaign organisations.
• The winner receives a prize of 20,000 Swiss francs (18,350 euros, $20,700).
• The debut recipient in 1994 was Chinese rights activist and former political prisoner Harry Wu, who moved to the United States in the mid-1980s.