PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: human rights
Indian leader
Mahatma Gandhi was an Indian lawyer, politician, social activist, and writer who became the leader of the Indian Independence Movement against British rule. As such, he came to be considered the father...
United States official and diplomat
Frederick Douglass was an African American abolitionist, orator, newspaper publisher, and author who is famous for his first autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave,...
Myanmar politician and opposition leader
Aung San Suu Kyi is a politician and opposition leader of Myanmar, daughter of Aung San (a martyred national hero of independent Burma) and Khin Kyi (a prominent Burmese diplomat), and winner of the Nobel...
Indian lawyer and social activist
Baba Amte was an Indian lawyer and social activist chiefly known for his rehabilitative initiatives for underprivileged leprosy patients and his involvement in the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA; “Save Narmada...
Soviet physicist and dissident
Andrey Sakharov was a Soviet nuclear theoretical physicist, an outspoken advocate of human rights, civil liberties, and reform in the Soviet Union as well as rapprochement with noncommunist nations. In...
president of Botswana
Duma Boko human rights lawyer and politician who became president of Botswana in 2024. His stunning victory ended nearly 60 years of rule by the Botswana Democratic Party, which had governed the landlocked...
Iranian human rights activist
Narges Mohammadi is an Iranian journalist and human rights activist who received the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2023. The award came after an especially tumultuous year of unrest in Iran following the death...
American Indian activist
Leonard Peltier is a Native American (mostly Ojibwa) activist who, after becoming one of the best-known indigenous rights activists in North America, was convicted in 1977 of having murdered two Federal...
Indian politician
Mamata Banerjee is an Indian politician, legislator, and bureaucrat who served as the first female chief minister of West Bengal state, India (2011– ). She founded the Trinamool Congress political party,...
American human rights lawyer and U.S. attorney general
Ramsey Clark was a human rights lawyer and former U.S. attorney general under President Lyndon B. Johnson. Clark—the son of Tom C. Clark, who served as attorney general under President Harry Truman and...
American disability rights activist
Judith Heumann was an American disability rights activist who fought for the integration and equality of individuals affected by disability in the United States and internationally. Because of her pioneering...
Somalian physician, lawyer, and activist
Hawa Abdi was a Somali physician, lawyer, community leader, and human rights activist. Amid the dangerous landscape of the Somali Civil War, Abdi organized a safe shelter, school, and clinical camp for...
president of Ireland
Michael D. Higgins is an Irish politician, human rights activist, university lecturer, and poet who began serving as president of Ireland in 2011. At age five Higgins was separated from his parents, whose...
Mi’kmaq Indian activist
Anna Mae Aquash was a Canadian-born Mi’kmaq Indian activist noted for her mysterious death by homicide shortly after her participation in a protest at Wounded Knee. Aquash was raised in poverty and, as...
American human rights activist
Ethel Kennedy was a lifelong advocate for social justice and human rights, who is perhaps best known for the tragedy that helped define her life, including the assassination of her husband, Robert F. Kennedy,...
Uyghur entrepreneur
Rebiya Kadeer is a Uyghur entrepreneur and human rights activist. A longtime advocate of greater autonomy for China’s Uyghurs (a Turkic Muslim population that accounts for a slim majority of the population...
Indian social reformer
Kailash Satyarthi is an Indian social reformer who campaigned against child labor in India and elsewhere and advocated the universal right to education. In 2014 he was the corecipient of the Nobel Peace...
American attorney
Bryan Stevenson is an American lawyer, professor, author, and activist who works to bring legal representation to poor, juvenile, mentally ill, and minority prisoners in the South. He founded the Equal...
Dutch politician
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a Somali-born Dutch American activist, writer, and politician best known for her contention that Islam is fundamentally incompatible with Western democratic values, especially those...
Argentine lawyer
Emilio Fermin Mignone was an Argentine lawyer and founder of the Centre for Legal and Social Studies, which documented human rights abuses committed by the Argentine military during its 1976–83 dictatorship....
Chinese-American activist
Harry Hongda Wu was a Chinese-born American activist who is best known for his efforts to expose human rights violations in China. Wu Hongda was born to a homemaker and a banker. At age 13 he began attending...
South African activist, educator, and author
Fatima Meer was a South African antiapartheid and human rights activist, educator, and author. From the mid-20th century, she was one of the most prominent women political leaders in South Africa. Meer...
Canadian First Nations leader
Ovide Mercredi is a First Nations leader who served as national chief of the Assembly of First Nations in Canada from 1991 to 1997. Mercredi, who is of Cree descent, lived outside the Grand Rapids reserve...
Indian activist
Medha Patkar is an Indian social activist known chiefly for her work with people displaced by the Narmada Valley Development Project (NVDP), a large-scale plan to dam the Narmada River and its tributaries...
president of Ireland
Mary Robinson is an Irish lawyer, politician, and diplomat who served as the first woman president of Ireland (1990–97). She later was United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR; 1997–2002)....
president of Czech Republic
Václav Havel was a Czech playwright, poet, and political dissident who, after the fall of communism, was president of Czechoslovakia (1989–92) and of the Czech Republic (1993–2003). Havel was the son of...
Iraqi human rights activist
Nadia Murad is a Yazīdī human rights activist who was kidnapped by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL; also called ISIS) in August 2014 and sold into sex slavery. She escaped three months later,...
Iranian lawyer, author and teacher
Shirin Ebadi is an Iranian lawyer, writer, and teacher, who received the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2003 for her efforts to promote democracy and human rights, especially those of women and children in Iran....
Tibetan scholar and political leader
Lobsang Sangay is a Tibetan scholar and political leader who became prime minister in the Tibetan Central Administration, the Tibetan government-in-exile, in 2011. He was both the first non-monk and the...
American educator and writer
Anna Julia Cooper was an American educator and writer whose book A Voice From the South by a Black Woman of the South (1892) became a classic African American feminist text. Cooper was the daughter of...
Congolese physician
Denis Mukwege is a Congolese physician noted for his work in treating victims of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). In 2018 he was a corecipient, with Yazīdī activist Nadia...
Chinese critic, professor, and activist
Liu Xiaobo was a Chinese literary critic, professor, and human rights activist who called for democratic reforms and the end of one-party rule in China. In 2010 he became the first Chinese citizen to be...
Mexican human rights activist and environmentalist
Edwin Bustillos García was a human rights activist and environmentalist who spent most of his life working to reduce logging and the cultivating of illicit drug crops in Mexico’s Sierra Madre Occidental...
bishop of East Timor
Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo is a former Roman Catholic bishop of Dili (1988–2002) who, with José Ramos-Horta, received the 1996 Nobel Prize for Peace for their efforts to bring peace to East Timor (Timor...
American antislavery activist
Samuel Cotton was an American antislavery activist and spokesman for the eradication of contemporary slavery in Mauritania and Sudan. Raised in the impoverished Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn,...
Salvadoran Roman Catholic archbishop
St. Óscar Romero ; beatified May 23, 2015; canonized October 14, 2018; feast day March 24) was a Salvadoran Roman Catholic archbishop who was a vocal critic of the violent activities of government armed...
American activist
Ella Baker was an American community organizer and political activist who brought her skills and principles to bear in the founding of major civil rights organizations of the mid-20th century. She is widely...
American religious leader and activist
Troy Perry is an American religious leader, gay rights and human rights activist, and founder of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches (UFMCC), better known as Metropolitan Community...
Belarusian activist
Ales Bialiatski is a Belarusian human rights activist who, with the Center for Civil Liberties and Memorial, won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2022. Bialiatski had an unlikely journey to the Nobel Peace...
Irish statesman
Seán MacBride was an Irish statesman who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1974 for his efforts on behalf of human rights. MacBride was the son of the Irish actress and patriot Maud Gonne and her...
American disability rights activist
Ed Roberts was an American disability rights activist who is considered the founder of the independent-living movement Roberts contracted polio at age 14 and was paralyzed from the neck down. Requiring...
French jurist
René Cassin was a French jurist and president of the European Court of Human Rights. He won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1968 for his involvement in the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights....
Australian activist and scholar
Mick Dodson is an Australian Aboriginal political activist and scholar who was named the 2009 Australian of the Year in recognition of his work to help better the lives of the country’s Indigenous peoples...
American philanthropist
Eunice Kennedy Shriver was an American social activist who worked tirelessly to improve the lives of the intellectually disabled and, in an effort to provide a forum for them to compete athletically, founded...
Soviet-Israeli human-rights activist
Anatoly Shcharansky is a Soviet dissident, a human-rights advocate who was imprisoned (1977–86) by the Soviet government and then allowed to go to Israel. Shcharansky’s father was a Communist Party member...
Soviet-born historian, playwright, and dissident
Andrey Alekseyevich Amalrik was a Soviet-born historian, playwright, and political dissident who was twice exiled to Siberia and was imprisoned in a labour camp before being granted an exit visa in 1976....
Swiss humanitarian
Henri Dunant was a Swiss humanitarian, founder of the Red Cross (now Red Cross and Red Crescent) and the World Alliance of Young Men’s Christian Associations. He was cowinner (with Frédéric Passy) of the...
American poet
Carolyn Forché is an American poet whose concern for human rights is reflected in her writing, especially in the collection The Country Between Us (1981), which examines events she witnessed in El Salvador....
Argentine sculptor and architect
Adolfo Pérez Esquivel is an Argentine sculptor and architect, who became a champion of human rights and nonviolent reform in Latin America. His work as secretary-general of Peace and Justice (Paz y Justicia),...
American journalist and government official
Samantha Power is an American journalist, human rights scholar, and government official who served on the National Security Council (2008–13) and as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations (2013–17)...
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