The Mary Chirwa Award for Courageous Leadership

The Award: Recognising Courageous Leadership

The Mary Chirwa Award Foundation together with Nudge aim to recognise women who have a proven record of courageous leadership in a field related to one or more of the Sustainable Development Goal(s).
The winner is awarded US$5,000 for their cause and is invited to a ceremony at the Peace Palace, in The Hague, the Netherlands.

Who is Mary Chirwa?

Mary Chirwa is the former Director General of the Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC) in Zambia, a government agency responsible for regulating financial crime. In this role, she fought corruption, money laundering and terrorism financing in her country. Her yearly reports disclosed money trails that lead to criminal situations in Zambia. Chirwa was a guest of honour during the Nudge Global Impact Awards 2018, where she told the audience that, since publishing the reports, she has been receiving threats to her life. Nonetheless, she remained resolute in her duties to fight financial crime.

Jan van Betten, Mr. George Papandreou, Mr. Maksym Kononenko, Peace Palace, The Hague, 27 May 2022

The winner of the 2022 edition

The Award was suspended in 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, considering the unstable times we are now living in, namely the aftermath of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine urged the president of the Mary Chirwa Foundation to continue the mission of the Award. Thus, this year the award has once again recognised the leadership of courageous women. The nomination committee has deliberated on the winner of this year’s edition. The winner of the Mary Chirwa Award 2022 is: Oksana Syroyid.

Oksana Syroyid is one of the strongest leaders of the democratic forces in Ukraine. She has worked in civil society, in parliament, in grassroots politics, in academia. She has dedicated her life to building Ukraine into an independent and democratic nation state. She was one of the driving forces behind the reforms of the legal and judicial system in Ukraine and the fight against corruption.  She created and leads one of the foremost foundations in this field. She was a parliamentarian for and later became the leader of “Samopomich”, one of the few non-oligarchic truly democratic political parties in Ukraine. As a professor she is now educating the Ukrainian leadership of tomorrow -especially with regard to developing and maintaining international relations. She has organized the most important security conference in the country on an almost yearly basis, working diligently and with a grim foresight on engaging the international community with the fate of a Ukraine under constant threat. 

Oksana discussed the possibility of a genocidal war of conquest by Putin’s Russia with me as early as 2014. She is an activist, a diplomat and a born patriot -but first and foremost one of the deepest thinkers I know. Fighting corruption, fighting the oligarchs, defying Putin and his minions in Ukraine again and again -the woman is stupendously brave. Because of that, since the war started my main worry is that she will not be careful enough with her own person. Her children need her to survive, Ukraine needs her to survive. Russia will have her on one of their kill lists. 

Oksana Syroyid has, because of the war, temporarily joined the territorial defence of Ukraine. She is responsible for their strategic communication. 

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Evaluation criteria

  • Identify as a woman
  • A proven record of courageous leadership in a field related to one or more of the Sustainable Development Goal(s).
  • A clear aspiration to make the world a better place.
  • Must not be a celebrity or a well-known public figure.
  • You may not nominate yourself.

Value of the Mary Chirwa Award:

  • The laureate receives a cheque of US$5,000 to use for funding a cause related to the field she or he is recognised for.
  • Recognition from our Mary Chirwa Award Committee.
  • Invitation to the Nudge Global Impact Awards ceremony at the Peace Palace in The Hague, the Netherlands. Keynote speakers, CEOs and sustainability leaders from all over the world will attend.

Mary Chirwa Award Committee and Winners

Mary Chirwa Award Committee

H.R.H. Prince Carlos de Bourbon de Parma

Head of the House of Bourbon-Parma, member of the Dutch Royal Family

George Papandreou

Former Prime Minister of Greece 2009-2011, MP for the Movement for Change alliance

Jeff Furman

Former Chair of the Board at Ben&Jerry’s

Frans Geraedts

Owner at Governance and Integrity Nederland

Mary Chirwa

Director General of the Drug Enforcement Commission in Zambia.

Mr. Maksym Kononenko, Ambassador of Ukraine to the Kingdom of the Netherlands, receiving the Award in the name of Oksana Syroyid, Peace Palace, The Hague, 27 May 2022

Winners Mary Chirwa Awards


Mary Chirwa, Director General of the Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC), Zambia – Winners 2019

Father Antonios Papanikolaou, Priest/Humanitarian, Greece – Winner 2019

Oksana Syroyid, Ukrainian politician and jurist – Winner 2022

For more information about the Mary Chirwa Foundation, please download this Beleidsplan.

If you want to download the Mary Chirwa foundation financial statement for 2019, click here.

If you want to download the Mary Chirwa foundation financial statement for 2020, click here.

If you want to download the Mary Chirwa foundation financial statement for 2021, click here.

The board members of the Mary Chirwa Award foundation are: Marlon Sahetapy (treasurer), en Jan van Betten (chairman).