Foreign Policy named prominent human rights defender Razan Zaitouneh in its 2011 list of Top Global Thinkers. She was awarded the Anna Politkovskaya Award by Reach All Women in War, in the same year. She also won the Sakhrov Prize for Freedom of Thought, an award that celebrates individuals and groups of people who have dedicated their lives to defend human rights.

In 2012, Zaitouneh was awarded the Ibn Rushd Prize for Freedom of Thought in Berlin. While in 2013, she was granted the International Women of Courage Award.
Vital Voices awarded Razan the International Leadership Award in 2014. Later that year, the Heinrich Böll Foundation presented the Petra-Kelly prize to the Violations Documentation Center in Syria (VDC) and its four abducted members Razan Zaitouneh, Samira Khalil, Nazim Hamadi and Wael Hammada. The whereabouts of the kidnapped activists remain unknown since their disappearance in December 2013.