Human Rights Essay Prize 2026
Editorial #19
When read as a whole, the essays were a raucous mix of literary styles and human rights perspectives. In memoir, peer review, poetic ways they presented views on sexuality, war, suffering, neurodivergence, indigeneity, and so many other topics. Reading them together felt like a beautiful kaleidoscope upon our world as a whole and often with joy, celebration and uplifting answers no matter the trauma.
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The Pursuit of Happiness
WINNER: CHRISTOPHER BRYANT
Twelve years ago, In one of these states, I wandered onto a highway and was struck by the only car on the road. I flew up, and I fell down. I broke a lot of my body, cracked my skull, and injured my brain. I spent 12 months relearning how to: walk, talk, go to the bathroom, exist on my own terms, trust other people, and trust myself again.
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Pollution stops the reflection
SECOND PLACE: M LOMBAARD
My body is trans, I take testosterone for masculinising effect. My body is trans, I breathe the pollutants that we collectively create. My body is trans, I eat and I drink and I take supplements. I take in, my body shifts, I let out. I have the right to gender-affirming care, and luckily I can afford some of it.
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I owe everything to old lesbians
THIRD PLACE: EM READMAN
The first people I heard being homophobic were older women. Teachers, churchgoers, and extended family sat in chairs clustered around dusty glass outdoor settings. They would gossip, and I would listen. Rumours would swell under Queensland summer; if anyone knew the circumstances of so-and-so’s parents’ separation, that it was curious and odd that her mum moved out with the help of a very close friend.
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Coming Out Again and Again
ELISHA JACOBS-SMITH
I recall how confusing it felt when we were told she had a girlfriend. It clashed with everything we had been taught through church. But at the same time, I spent a lot of time at her house on weekends. We had fun, we went out, laughed, and just enjoyed life. Her and her girlfriend who I acknowledge as my aunty too would sometimes say to me, “You’re like us.”
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The India That Should
EKTA SONAWANE
For the next two hours, a fasting trans man on a Hindu holy day sat across from me and talked. Before we began, he apologised. "I am sorry I can't take you home," he said. "I feel bad. But I won't be able to give this interview freely there." I told him it was fine. It was indeed more than fine. But his discomfort with his home stayed with me.
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The Collapse of the Rainbow
TREYVONE MOOSA
In 1996, South Africa gave the world a gift. Our Constitution is lauded as an extraordinary legislative moment. Our new government had just dismantled apartheid’s racial segregation and was also refusing to uphold further systems of dehumanisation… so they wrote us all in—race, gender, sex, ethnic origin, sexual orientation and more.
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Rainbow on Toast
LAETITIA THOMPSON
I have spent much of my life thinking about description without even realising it until I had to do it for my job. As a disabled person, I was often described before I had the chance to describe myself. Medical records, assessments, government forms, random strangers on Transperth. Everybody seemed to have an opinion about which details were important.
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To be a Queer Noongar
KURTIS MAKURU
My story starts long before I was born from Kinjarling rain. Ancestors with me every step of the way on my long winding walk, whether I knew it or not. My spirit is strong today, I can feel it glowing brighter fanned by the breath of the communities I find myself in. I did not think it possible. White skinned. Black inside. Lost. A gnawing sensation that I am something other than my mother told me.
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The Sea Remembers
CHARLES KING
Then, in August 1735, the colonial state intervened. The court convicted them of what Roman-Dutch law described as "the abominable and unnatural crime of sodomy." I have come here because of these two men. Or perhaps because of a question. The two are difficult to separate. The question is simple enough: what happened to Klaas Blank and Rijkhaart Jacobz?
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The Cost of Being Seen
STEVIE LANE
For LGBTIQA+ communities, this is not merely a theoretical concern. Long before governments and human rights bodies began advocating for the collection of data to better understand our communities, data was collected to identify, criminalise, pathologise and eradicate queer, trans and intersex people.
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How to Survive in a Country that's Killing You
ALIFYA MAHESWARI
I am a feminist activist and a queer community organizer in a country that is actively killing me and people like me. I often wonder how one survives in that kind of environment. I live my life answering that question every day. After three years of digital feminist activism and two years of on-the-ground queer activism, I can finally put together a guide.
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