People

Tags Share JUST LEADERSHIP USA is dedicated to cutting the US correctional population in #halfby2030. JLUSA empowers people most affected by incarceration to drive policy reform. Mass incarceration is the most significant domestic threat to the fabric of our democracy. The reason for such high incarceration rates is not serious crimes but misguided policies such…

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Tags Share ANDREA JAMES is the Founder and Executive Director of Families for Justice as Healing, the founder of the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls, a 2015 Soros Justice Fellow, and the author of Upper Bunkies Unite: And Other Thoughts On the Politics of Mass Incarceration. Andrea worked within the…

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Tags Share Natalia Taubina holds law enforcement agents accountable for human rights violations and protects victims of police abuse in Russia. As Director of the Public Verdict Foundation, Ms. Taubina and her team of attorneys litigate on behalf of citizens wrongfully arrested, beaten, tortured, and illegally detained by police. Ms. Taubina is also a powerful…

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Tags Share Adilur Rahman Khan is one of Bangladesh’s most devoted human rights defenders. In his decades of activism, he has established a nationwide network of rights defenders and leads Odhikar, the country’s premier human rights organization. Odhikar monitors an extraordinary array of human rights violations in Bangladesh, including restrictions on freedom of expression, abuse…

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Tags Share 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…

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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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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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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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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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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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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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