Some of the world’s biggest celebrities strode up the stone steps of the Natural History Museum in London on Friday to attend the fifth edition of an awards ceremony and benefit organized by the Clooney Foundation for Justice.
The Albies, as the black-tie gala is known, focus on “brave individuals and groups from around the globe who, at great personal risk, have devoted their lives to fighting for justice,” according to the foundation’s website.
The event, which was sponsored by Microsoft, Charlotte Tilbury and Gucci, happened to fall on the same day that a human rights lawyer won the Nobel Peace Prize and the Trump administration imposed severe financial sanctions on the International Criminal Court.
Human rights are “under assault,” said Christiane Amanpour, the longtime journalist and CNN anchor, before walking into the gala. Especially, she added, the institutions defending human rights.
“There are plenty of issues with some of these bodies,” Amanpour said. But she said, they were important places to hold individuals accountable.
“Places like international courts do what they’re meant to do,” she said. “It’s to ascribe individual guilt rather than collective guilt.”
The ceremony on Friday honored multiple journalists, including the Kyrgyz journalists Bolot Temirov and Makhabat Tazhibek Kyzy as well as Lynsey Addario, a photojournalist who has covered international conflicts and who is also a contributor to The New York Times
“The need for pointing out people who are justice warriors just never seems to subside,” said George Clooney, whose father was a journalist.
Journalism today is facing multiple challenges, including artificial intelligence, Amanpour said. “We’re under a huge amount of pressure,” she said. “There’s a whole scope of dangers.”
Other honorees included Vanessa Mwangala, the founder and executive director of the nonprofit Voices Awake: Girls Equipped for Change; the Congolese human rights organization Justice Plus; and Brad Smith, the vice chairman and president of Microsoft.
“To really think about how human rights and technology intersect is of fundamental importance,” Smith said. “This is a time when the technology itself is raising bigger questions and concerns.”
But he added that he had never had to risk his life or his freedom in the same way that some of the other honorees had. “I’ve endured some long meetings,” Smith said. “I don’t think that quite fits in the same category.”
Among the celebrity guests were Anna Wintour, who attended with her brother Patrick Wintour; Brad Pitt, although he skipped the red carpet portion of the evening; the fashion designer Donatella Versace; the model and actress Emily Ratajkowski; Emma Thompson; Laura Dern; Isla Fisher; Hugh Bonneville; Ncuti Gatwa; and many others.
“I’m really happy that I was in the right part of the world to be able to come,” said Wintour, who attended the event for the first time. “We need to put a spotlight on people that are doing amazing work around the world and need our support.”
It was the second time that the Albies — open only to the Clooneys’ friends and other invited guests, a group that did not include this reporter for The New York Times — was being held in London rather than in New York. “We really enjoy being here,” George Clooney said. “And it’s a good place to talk about human rights.”
The Albies were named after Justice Albie Sachs, a white South African jurist, author and antiapartheid activist. He received the Clooney Foundation for Justice’s first Albie Award in 2022. The Clooneys founded the organization in 2016.
The evening was hosted by Graham Norton and included musical performances by Jackson Browne and Vic Mensa.
Inside the party, the interiors were inspired by Italian Baroque, including “emerald velvet draping, gilded accents and crystal chandeliers” as well as “abundant arrangements of seasonal flowers and fruit,” according to the organizers.
For many of the celebrities and other notable people in attendance on Friday, the event seemed to be about more than finger foods or mingling with some of the world’s most recognizable faces. The party was foremost, they said, about honoring individuals who risked their lives for the benefit of others.
For the actor and comedian Richard Kind, who lives in New York, showing up to the party on Friday was about recognizing people who are “living such difficult lives so others may have a better life.”
“I go through a very, very, easy, comfortable life in America,” Kind added. “You got to celebrate these people.”
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