Human Rights Law Essay Prize
The Human Rights Law Essay Prize is awarded annually to the applicant who produces the most original essay on human rights in Australia and/or New Zealand, having previously submitted the essay for assessment to an Australian or New Zealand university.
The recipient of the Human Rights Law Essay Prize will be selected by a judging panel appointed by the committee of the Human Rights Law Association. The winner will be announced close to Human Rights Week in December and will receive a prize of $1000.
Closing date: 1 October 2025.
How to submit entry: Fill in the application form here and send it together with a Word or PDF copy of your essay to admin@hrla.net with the subject line ‘Human Rights Law Essay Prize submission’.
Entry requirements: To be eligible, the topic of the essay must be human rights in Australia or New Zealand and the essay must have previously been submitted for assessment to a university in Australia or New Zealand (whether undergraduate or graduate). Students from any discipline are encouraged to apply.
Word limit: Essays up to 8,000 words.
The paper must be original. The Human Rights Law Essay Prize promotes freedom of expression for applicants, not other people or computers. If the judging panel reasonably suspects that a submitted paper includes plagiarised material or text generated by artificial intelligence (AI) software (including Chat GPT), the paper will be excluded from consideration at their absolute discretion.
Judging criteria: Each year, the judging panel will be looking for the paper that makes the most original contribution to the discipline of human rights in Australia and New Zealand. The judging criteria are: the originality of the contribution to human rights in Australia and New Zealand, and how well the author expresses their ideas.
