Since 2022, the Dutch Independence Foundation also presents an award to those who ‘fight’ for independence, who rethink that concept, try to give it a modern, contemporary interpretation and - most important - bring their ideas into practice: the Dutch Independence Award. In 2022, the laureate was the president of Ukraine, Volodymir Zelenski, already engaged in a life and death struggle for his country's independence against Russian aggression.

In 2023, for the Dutch Independence Award, the jury decided to decorate not one person, but a whole group of people with this award. A group that is currently in the middle of an uphill battle against this tyrannical regime. A regime that the people did not choose. A regime that a vast majority would gladly "abandon" in a move toward true statehood independence. As the Dutch did in 1581 by abandoning the Spanish reign. The Dutch Independence Award 2023 went to the driving force behind the Iranian resistance: the women of Iran.

The Dutch Independence Award for 2024 was awarded to the Holy Land Confederation. This initiative seeks to establish a Palestinian Israeli confederation as a means of facilitating a two-state solution. Such a confederation provides a new framework for negotiating a permanent solution between the two sovereign nations of Israel and Palestine, not as a substitute for it. Initiators of the Holy Land Confederation are Ms. Hiba Husseini (Managing Partner of Husseini & Husseini Lawyers in Ramallah and former legal adviser to the Palestinian delegation to the peace process) and Mr. Yossi Beilin (former Israeli Justice Minister and one of the Israeli architects of the Oslo Accords). They are working with a team of other Palestinian and Israeli experts. Husseini and Beilin received this prize as representatives of their shining example of forward thinking and acting on independence.

The board of the Dutch Independence Foundation also acts as jury for the Dutch Independence Award. To this end, in ’22 and ’23 she placed herself under the independent chairmanship of the late Prof. dr. Mathieu Segers (Maastricht University). Since 2024 Han ten Broeke, Chef de Cabinet of European Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra, former MP and former political director of The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies is our independent jury chairman.