People
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Ragia Omran
At the height of the Arab Spring, when many wondered how the energy of the uprising could be harnessed to promote lasting political freedoms, Ragia Omran made a bold move. She co-founded the Almasry Alhurr Movement, calling for government accountability, social justice, and an end to emergency rule. Through the Front to Defend Egypt Protestors,…
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Librada Paz
Tags Share Through her work with the Rural and Migrant Ministry, Librada Paz has played a key role in the historic advancement for the rights of farm workers. In 2003, when Paz and her colleagues at the RMM organized a march throughout New York State, they not only galvanized farm workers, but brought attention to…
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Abel Barrera Hernández
Tags Share The work of anthropologist and human rights activist Abel Barrera Hernández has made him a local hero both in his hometown of Tlapa de Comonfort, Guerrero and throughout Mexico. In 1994, after 12 years of study in theology and anthropology with a focus on indigenous peoples’ human rights, Barrera returned to his hometown…
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Frank Mugisha
Tags Share In December of 2013, Uganda’s parliament did the unthinkable: it passed a law that criminalized homosexuality; the statute carried penalties up to and including life in prison. Frank Mugisha set to work. As the Executive Director of Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG), Mugisha has long risked his personal safety for the cause of LGBT…
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Magodonga Mahlangu & Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA)
Tags Share Magodonga Mahlangu is a women’s rights campaigner from Zimbabwe who in 2009 was awarded the Robert F Kennedy Human Rights Award by U.S. President Barack Obama. Mahlangu is a leader of Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA), founded with Jenni Williams. When presenting the award to Magodonga and WOZA, Obama commented: “By her example,…
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Aminatou Haidar
Tags Share One might expect Aminatou Haidar to stop fighting. She has been arrested, beaten, and tortured, all for peacefully speaking truth to power. In 1987, she and 70 demonstrators whom she led in a peaceful protest against Morocco’s illegal occupation of Western Sahara were disappeared. For four years, she was held in a secret…
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Mohammed Ahmed Abdallah
Tags Share Dr. Mohammed Ahmed Abdallah knows hard work, from the hours he spent farming his family’s land in order to obtain his medical degree to the hours he spends daily serving the throngs of people who appear on his doorstep seeking medical assistance. As a physician and Professor of Medicine at el-Fasher University in…
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Sonia Pierre
Tags Share Sonia Pierre led the movement against a century of state-sponsored racial discrimination by the Dominican government against Dominicans of Haitian descent. The target of hate crimes, Dominicans with a Haitian background are also denied citizenship and face the threat of deportation from the country in which they were born, worked, and raised a…
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Delphine Djiraibe
Tags Share In a country stricken with the effects of decades of civil war, continuing violence and the violation of fundamental rights, Djiraibe, a human rights attorney and co-founder of the Chadian Association for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights, fights to protect the human rights of Chadian civilians and to prevent further environmental…
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Coalition of Immokalee Workers
Tags Share Unbeknownst to many Americans, agriculture in the United States is rife with human rights abuses. In the multi-billion dollar farming industry, corporations negotiate with growers to purchase mass quantities of product for the lowest possible prices. Farmworkers have borne the brunt of this market pressure, in part because their rights to organize and…
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Darci Frigo
Tags Share Darci Frigo, the founder of the NGO Terra de Direitos (TDD), fights to give land to the landless, put an end to modern-day slavery, ensure more sustainable stewardship of the land and protect Brazil’s biodiversity. He is a former seminarian and passionate defender of the landless poor in Brazil. As an attorney he…
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Loune Viaud
Tags Share In January of 2010, Loune Viaud attended a meeting of public health experts in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to discuss the nation’s recovery from four devastating hurricanes that had erased most of the country’s infrastructure. Loune had already made a tremendous difference in Haiti. With her colleagues at Zanmi Lasante and Partners in Health, she…
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