Harry and Meghan are set to receive the same human rights award as Barack Obama (Picture: Getty)
Prince Harry and Meghan are set to receive the same human rights award as former president Barack Obama.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are going to receive an award next month at the Ripple of Hope gala, which honours people for their humanitarian efforts.
The couple will be handed a gong where previous winners have included US President Joe Biden and former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, as well as former Democratic Presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Al Gore.
The gala is organised by the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights foundation, named after President Kennedy’s younger brother, who was assassinated in 1968.
The decision to give Meghan and Harry a top human rights award has baffled some Kennedy historians.
Professor David Nasaw, author of the Pulitzer Prize-nominated book The Patriarch, about JFK and RFK’s father Joseph Kennedy, said: ‘I find it somewhere between sublimely ridiculous and blatantly ludicrous. It’s absurd.
The former US president has also won awards at the Ripple of Hope gala (Picture: Shutterstock)
The Sussexes will be followed by a team of photographers, it has been reported (Picture: WireImage)
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‘If you look at the people who have been awarded the Robert Kennedy prize in the past – Bill and Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi [Speaker of the US House of Representatives], Bishop Desmond Tutu – and then you have to ask what are Harry and Meghan doing here?
‘What in God’s name have they done to merit this? What percentage of Harry and Meghan’s wealth is going to worthy causes?’
Prof Nasaw said Kennedy patriarch Joe, a staunch Irish Catholic, would be turning in his grave to see branches of his family ‘latching on to British Royalty’.
Tickets for the glitzy gala night are selling for up to $1 million, to rub shoulders with the ex-Royal couple.
The ‘Pioneer’ package includes four seats at the top table where the Duke and Duchess are expected to sit.
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A team of photographers will be at the VIP event to capture Meghan and Harry being introduced to the event’s biggest donors, according to the Mail on Sunday.
A source said: ‘At previous events the photographers at the VIP reception have made sure they get pictures of the high donors with celebrity guests and honourees.
‘It’s the American way. If you are paying big bucks, you want the pictures as bragging rights.’
Hollywood A-lister Alec Baldwin will host the gala, which will also honour Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky.
While the decision to honour the Sussexes has baffled some, it may be no coincidence that the director of their upcoming Netflix docu-series, Liz Garbus, is partner in a film company with Rory Kennedy, the youngest of Robert F. Kennedy’s 11 children.
One Hollywood producer told the Mail on Sunday said: ‘Everyone has been scratching their heads to try to figure out the reason why Harry and Meghan were chosen to receive this while they are still in the early stages of their philanthropic work.
‘Perhaps the connection between the Netflix documentary and Rory Kennedy is it?’
The gala will take place four days after the Prince and Princess of Wales attend the Earthshot prize in Boston.
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Tickets to sit at the top table of the event with Meghan and Harry are selling for up to $1 million
