A Singaporean lawyer and diplomat who led an international conference that adopted the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, a Myanmar activist whose group documents human rights atrocities and a former Bangladeshi teacher who has helped provide aid to her country's poorest were named Monday as the winners of this year's Ramon Magsaysay Awards.

Regarded as Asia's version of the Nobel Prize and named after a popular Philippine president, who died in a 1957 plane crash, the awards honor "greatness of spirit" through selfless service to people across Asia.

The winners of the award, first given in 1958, will be recognized at the Metropolitan Theatre in Manila on Nov. 15 with a medallion, inscribed certificate and an undisclosed cash prize.