Runa Khan, Founder of Friendship, Receives 2026 Ramon Magsaysay Award

By Raeed Abd-Allah Chowdhury

On 31 August 2026, Runa Khan, Founder of Friendship, was named one of the three recipients of the 68th Ramon Magsaysay Award. The award recognises more than two decades of her leadership in developing holistic, locally led approaches that enable marginalised communities to live with greater opportunity, dignity and hope.

The Ramon Magsaysay Award is Asia’s premier prize and highest honour—widely regarded as the “Nobel Prize of Asia—and recognises “greatness of spirit” and “transformative leadership in Asia”. First awarded in 1958 in memory of seventh Philippine President Ramon Magsaysay, the Award has recognised individuals and organisations whose selfless service has contributed solutions to some of the region’s most challenging human development problems. Runa Khan is the 14th recipient from Bangladesh, joining a distinguished group that includes Dr Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen and Mother Teresa, who visited a river barge in the nineties that would one day become Friendship’s first floating hospital. Remarkably, both awardees are also recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize. Other notable awardees from previous years include Sir Fazle Hasan Abed, founder of Brac, filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, and the Dalai Lama. 

According to the official citation, Runa Khan is being recognised for “her profound empathy for the poorest of the poor in her country, and her courage, vision, and tenacity in building and leading Friendship to accomplish her mission. In her hands, privilege became not an entitlement, but a responsibility; not a family legacy to protect, but a gift to be shared so that others, too, might have the chance to live with hope, opportunity, and dignity.”

For Runa Khan, the recognition is rooted in a journey that began in some of Bangladesh’s most remote riverine communities. In 1997, she encountered the harsh realities faced by people living on chars — shifting river islands and sandbars where erosion, flooding and displacement can repeatedly uproot homes and livelihoods. Access to healthcare, education and other essential services is often severely limited. What she saw led her to establish a floating hospital in 2002 and, in the same year, to found Friendship.

What began as a single hospital has since developed into an integrated social purpose organisation reaching 7.5 million people annually. Friendship now works across healthcare, education, climate action, sustainable economic development, inclusive citizenship and cultural preservation. The organisation’s approach is grounded in a recognition that the challenges faced by remote communities are interconnected, and that solutions need to be designed accordingly.

Runa Khan stated, “It is with great happiness and profound humility that I accept the Ramon Magsaysay Award 2026. There is no leader who walks alone, so it is an honour for me to receive this on behalf of the unaddressed communities who allow us to walk beside them; and on behalf of my Friendship Family whose tireless devotion makes this work possible every day. I also thank those who have trusted and walked this almost impossible path with me for 25 long years – just believing. My children, whose patience and understanding awes me. This recognition is a wonderful responsibility, and I offer my deepest gratitude to the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for their trust and for honouring the enduring faith and power of humanity.”

At the heart of this model is a simple principle: people should not have to fit systems that cannot reach them. Instead, systems should be shaped around people’s realities, capacities and knowledge. Friendship recruits and trains local people and works with communities to develop solutions with them, while placing particular emphasis on the inclusion of women and people with disabilities. Health, education, livelihoods, rights and climate resilience are addressed not as separate issues, but as parts of the same picture.

The scale of that work is now considerable. Friendship has established a three-tier healthcare system, working through seven hospital ships and two land-based hospitals to serve riverine, coastal and refugee communities. Its education programmes include schools designed to be dismantled and relocated when erosion threatens, while ICT-enabled learning connects students in remote areas with peers beyond Bangladesh. Climate adaptation initiatives include solar home systems, mangrove restoration and community-based disaster preparedness. Through its Sustainable Economic Development Hubs, the organisation also brings livelihood opportunities and support closer to isolated communities.

Five years after founding Friendship in Bangladesh, Runa Khan took the initiative to establish Friendship in Luxembourg in 2006, the Netherlands in 2007, the UK in 2010, France in 2015, and Belgium in 2018. Her vision was to work as closely as possible with donors and creating partners, thereby bypassing the long chains of intermediaries in international aid while preserving local ownership. That vision has proven to be extremely effective thanks to a strong community of supporters, both public and private. The International entities have stood by the side of Friendship Bangladesh at every stage of its development over the past 24 years.

Indeed, it is this very integrated climate adaptation solution that won Friendship the Earthshot Prize for the “Fix the Climate” category less than a year ago in 2025, recognising the effectiveness of holistic, locally-led and nature-based development that addresses all the sustainable development goals collectively. The Integrated Climate Adaptation Solution (ICAS), which is the underlying principle under all of Friendship’s interventions, is thus designed to be locally-led, nature-based, replicable, scalable and most importantly, holistically integrated into other solutions (health, education, agriculture, etc.).

Last but not least is Empowerment. These commitments work together to bring holistic, integrated solutions in a bottom-up approach that puts the communities front and centre in developing the interventions that are meant for them. © Friendship

Runa Khan’s contribution extends beyond the programmes themselves. Over more than two decades, she has carried the experiences and perspectives of climate-vulnerable communities into international climate, humanitarian and policy discussions, advocating for approaches that are locally led and shaped by the people most affected. Friendship-supported young people have also taken their communities’ experiences to international youth and climate platforms, helping to bring grassroots realities into wider conversations about climate change.

Notably, Runa Khan is also a member of the Club of Rome, Honorary President of the One Sustainable Health (OSH) Forum, Country Chair and Board Member of Global Dignity, and a jury member for the Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity. She is an Ashoka Fellow (1994), Rolex Laureate (2006), recipient of the IDB Award for Women’s Contribution to Development (2008), and winner of the Schwab Foundation’s Social Entrepreneur Award (2012), among other national and international recognitions.

Completing the roster of the 2026 Ramon Magsaysay Awardees are Tommy Koh from Singapore, a career diplomat and public servant recognized for his contributions to international diplomacy, global cooperation, and the peaceful resolution of disputes; and Bo Kyi from Myanmar, a former political prisoner and human rights advocate whose work has given voice to political prisoners and survivors of torture while advancing accountability, justice, and human rights.

Runa Khan will formally receive the award at the 68th Ramon Magsaysay Awards Presentation Ceremony in Manila, Philippines, on 15 November 2026.

source : friendship