- Jimmy Carter
James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. (born), was the thirty-ninth President of the United States from 1977 to 1981, and the Nobel Peace laureate of 2002. Prior to becoming president, Carter served two terms in the Georgia Senate, and was the 76th Governor of Georgia from 1971 to 1975. Carter's presidency saw the creation of two cabinet-level departments: the Department of Energy and the Department of Education.
- Robert Mugabe
Robert Gabriel Mugabe KCB (born on February 21, 1924) is the President of Zimbabwe. He has been the head of government in Zimbabwe since 1980, first as Prime Minister and later as first executive President. He rose to prominence in the 1970s when he led the Zimbabwe African National Union in guerrilla warfare against the white-dominated government of Rhodesia until the government accepted universal suffrage and black-majority rule.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was one of the main leaders of the American civil rights movement, a political activist, a Baptist minister, and is regarded as one of America's greatest orators. King's most influential and well-known public address is the "I Have A Dream" speech, delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. in 1963. In 1964, King became the youngest man to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (for his work as a peacemaker, …
- Ralph Nader
Ralph Nader (born February 27, 1934) is an American attorney and political activist, who has promoted a wide range of issues, including consumer rights, feminism, humanitarianism, environmentalism and democratic government. Nader has been a staunch critic of American foreign policy in recent decades, which he views as corporatist, imperialist, and contrary to the fundamental values of democracy and human rights.
- Amy Goodman
Amy Goodman is an American progressive broadcast journalist and author. A 1984 graduate of Harvard University, Goodman is best known as the principal host of Pacifica Radio's "Democracy Now!" program, where she has been described by the Los Angeles Times as "radio's voice of the disenfranchised left". Coverage of the peace and human rights movements — and support of the independent media — are the hallmarks of her work.
- Henry A. Kissinger
Newly declassified State Department documents obtained by the National Security Archive under the Freedom of Information Act show that in October 1976, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and high ranking U.S. officials gave their full support to the Argentine military junta and urged them to hurry up and finish the "dirty war" before the U.S. Congress cut military aid.
- George Soros
George Soros (born August 12, 1930, in Budapest, Hungary, as György Schwartz) is an American financial speculator, stock investor, philanthropist, and political activist. He peacefully promotes democracy in Eastern Europe. Currently, he is the chairman of Soros Fund Management and the Open Society Institute and is also a former member of the Board of Directors of the Council on Foreign Relations. His support for the Solidarity labor movement in Poland, …
- Augusto Pinochet
"' The junta members originally planned for the presidency to rotate among the commanders-in-chief of the four military branches. However, Pinochet soon consolidated his control, first retaining sole chairmanship of the military junta, and then proclaiming himself "Supreme Chief of the Nation" (de facto provisional president) on June 27, 1974. He officially changed his title to "President" on December 17. In 1980, by the way of another national referendum, Chile got a new Constitution, …
- Malcolm X
Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little; May 19, 1925 - February 21, 1965), also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, was an American Black Muslim minister and spokesman for the Nation of Islam. After leaving the Nation of Islam in 1964, he went on a pilgrimage to Mecca and became a Sunni Muslim; he also founded the Muslim Mosque, Inc. and the Organization of Afro-American Unity.
- Ayaan Hirsi Ali
This individual dismissed Warraq's unique and important collection on apostasy in Islam, because Warraq (and by extension, all Muslim apostates) was (were), '... no longer in the game.' It was astonishing to hear such a glib assessment from a conservative intellectual and self-appointed doyen (subsequently, government-appointed) examining Islamic terrorism.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt (October 11 1884 - November 7 1962) was an American political leader who used her influence as an active First Lady from 1933 to 1945 to promote the New Deal policies of her husband, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, as well as taking a prominent role as an advocate for civil rights. After her husband's death in 1945, she continued to be an internationally prominent author and speaker for the New Deal coalition.
- Peter Tatchell
Peter Gary Tatchell (born 25 January 1952) is an Australian-British human rights activist, who is best known internationally for his attempts to perform a citizen's arrest of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe in 1999 and 2001, on charges of torture and other human rights abuses. Tatchell was selected as Labour Party Parliamentary candidate for Bermondsey in 1981, …
- Shirin Ebadi
Shirin Ebadi is an Iranian lawyer, human rights activist and founder of Children's Rights Support Association in Iran. On December 10, 2003, Ebadi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her significant and pioneering efforts for democracy and human rights, especially women's and children's rights. She is the first Iranian and the first Muslim woman to receive the prize.
- Sam Harris
Sam Harris (born Samuel Kent Harris, 4 June 1961, Cushing, Oklahoma) is an American pop and musical theatre recording artist as well as a television, stage and film actor. Harris was the winner of the first "Star Search" competition in 1984, and no contestant surpassed his winning streak of fourteen weeks in a row in the entire history of the show.
- Anna Politkovskaya
Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya was a Russian journalist and human rights activist well known for her opposition to the Chechen conflict and the Putin administration. She held Russian and US citizenship. She was shot dead in the elevator of her apartment building on 7 October 2006. Politkovskaya made her name reporting from Chechnya for Russia's liberal newspaper, "Novaya Gazeta". The BBC described her writing as "often polemical, …
- Craig Murray
Craig Murray (born October, 1958) is a British political activist, university rector and formerly the United Kingdom's Ambassador to Uzbekistan. While in office, he accused the Karimov administration of human rights abuses, a step which, he argues, was against the wishes of the British government and the reason for his removal. Murray complained to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in November 2002, January or early February 2003, …
- Gao Zhisheng
Gao Zhisheng, age 41, is a Chinese army veteran, self taught lawyer and Christian whose law practice has been suspended by the Chinese authorities.
- Thaksin Shinawatra
Thai businessman and politician, is the former Prime Minister of Thailand, the former leader of the populist Thai Rak Thai party, and current owner of the Manchester City Football Club. Thaksin is wanted back in Thailand to face criminal charges of abuse of power and corruption during his reign as Prime Minister. Thaksin started his career in the Thai Police, and later became a successful entrepreneur, establishing Shin Corporation and Advanced Info Service, …
- Ibrahim Gambari
Dr. Ibrahim Agboola Gambari B.A., M.A., Ph.D, D.Hum.Litt., CFR (born on November 24, 1944 in Ilorin, Nigeria) is a Nigerian scholar and diplomat. He is current Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations (USG) for Department of Political Affairs ("DPA"). He was appointed on June 10 2005 and assumed the post on July 1 of that year.
- Thomas Lubanga
Thomas Lubanga Dyilo (born 29 December 1960 in Djiba, Ituri) was the founder and leader of the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC), an armed militia in Ituri, northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Implicated in numerous human rights violations against civilians and the murder of UN peacekeepers, he was arrested by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and is the first person put on trial by the ICC in the Hague, Netherlands.
- Marjorie Cohn
Marjorie Cohn is Professor of Law at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law, Sand Diego, California and president of the National Lawyers Guild. She is mostly known for her columns commenting on legal issues involving the Bush administration. Her weekly columns appear in AlterNet, Counterpunch, CommonDreams, After Downing Street, ZNet, and GlobalResearch. Beyond that she is a commentator for the BBC, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, NPR and Pacifica Radio.
- Alberto Fujimori
Alberto Ken<nowiki>'</nowiki>ya Fujimori and growing instability, he left Peru to attend an APEC summit in Brunei and then continued on to Japan, where he resigned. His resignation was initially transmitted by fax machine and later officially via the Peruvian Embassy in Tokyo. The Congress of the Republic refused to accept his resignation, and itself removed him from office. It then barred him from holding any elective office for 10 years.
- Samantha Power
Samantha Power 's 'A Problem from Hell' is a broad attempt to document the major acts of genocide/human rights violations of the 20th century paired with the international community's subsequent negligence in each case. She reports on the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, and especially her major areas of research- Rwanda and Serbia.
- Roh Moo-Hyun
Roh Moo-hyun (born September 1, 1946 in Gimhae, South Gyeongsang, South Korea) has been the President of South Korea since February 25, 2003. Before entering politics, Roh was a noted human rights lawyer. His political career was marked by attempts to overcome regionalism in South Korean politics, culminating in his election to the presidency. The emergence of a liberal reformist and anti-American political movement in the country was another factor in his victory.
- Irene Khan
Irene Khan, the Secretary General of Amnesty International led a high level
- Mordechai Vanunu
The traitor "' (born Marrakech, Morocco, October 13 1954), also known by his baptismal name John Crossman"', is an Israeli former nuclear technician who revealed details of Israel's nuclear weapons program to the British press in 1986. He was subsequently abducted in Rome by Israeli Mossad agents and smuggled to Israel, where he was tried in secret and convicted of treason.
- Bayard Rustin
Bayard Rustin was an African-American civil rights activist, important largely behind the scenes in the civil rights movement of the 1960s and earlier and principal organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. He counseled Martin Luther King, Jr. on the techniques of nonviolent resistance. Rustin was openly gay and advocated on behalf of gay and lesbian causes in the latter part of his career.
- Ariel Dorfman
Ariel Dorfman (born May 6 1942 Buenos Aires) is an Argentine-Chilean novelist, playwright, essayist, academic, and human rights activist. Dorfman, who is Jewish, was born in Argentina but his family moved to the United States shortly after his birth, and then moved to Chile in 1954. He attended and was later a professor at the University of Chile and adopted Chilean Citizenship in 1967. From 1970 to 1973, Dorfman was part of the administration of president Salvador Allende.
- Stephen Lewis
Stephen Henry Lewis, C.C. (born November 11, 1937) is a Canadian politician, broadcaster and diplomat. He is currently Social Science Scholar-in-Residence at McMaster University, having recently completed his term as United Nations special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa. Born in Ottawa, Ontario, the son of former federal New Democratic Party leader David Lewis, he attended Harbord Collegiate Institute and the University of Toronto.
- Michael Ratner
Michael Ratner (born 1943, Cleveland, Ohio) is an attorney, adjunct professor of law at Columbia University Law School, and president of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a non-profit human rights litigation organization based in New York, New York. He was co-counsel in representing the Guantanamo Bay detainees in the United States Supreme Court, where his clients won a major victory in June, 2004 that gave them the right to test the legality of their detentions.
- Joan Baez
Joan Chandos Baez (born January 9, 1941) is an American folk singer and songwriter known for her highly individual vocal style. She is a soprano with a three-octave vocal range and a distinctively rapid vibrato. Many of her songs are topical and deal with social issues.
- Manfred Nowak
Manfred Nowak (b. Bad Aussee, 26 June 1950) is an Austrian human rights lawyer. Nowak is a Professor at the University of Vienna, where he is Professor of Constitutional Law and Human Rights. Nowak was one of the judges of the Human Rights Chamber for Bosnia and Herzegovina between March 1996 and December 2003. He was also the vice president of the Chamber between December 1997 and December 1998. Nowak is currently the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, …
- Van Jones
Van Jones (1968-) is a civil rights and human rights advocate in Oakland, CA working to combine solutions to social inequality and environmental destruction. He is the co-founder and executive director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, which now employs 24 staff members. Jones founded the Ella Baker Center in 1996. Named for the civil rights and human rights heroine Ella Baker, …
- Asma Jahangir
Asma Jilani Jahangir (born 1952 Lahore) is a Pakistani lawyer and human rights activist. She has been the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief of the Commission on Human Rights since 2004. Previously, she served as the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Arbitrary and Summary Executions. Born into a family with a long history of human rights work (her father, Malik Jilani, …
- Andrei Sakharov
Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov (May 21 1921 – December 14 1989) was an eminent Soviet nuclear physicist, dissident and human rights activist. Sakharov was an advocate of civil liberties and reforms in the Soviet Union. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975.
- John Dugard
John Dugard (born in 1936 in Fort Beaufort ) is a South African professor of international law . He has served as Judge ad hoc on the International Court of Justice and as a Special Rapporteur for both the United Nations Commission on Human Rights and the International Law Commission . His main academic specializations are in Roman-Dutch law , public international law , jurisprudence , human rights , criminal procedure and international criminal law .
- Rama Yade
Rama Yade is a French politician. She was a national secretary at UMP in charge of Francophonie. She is currently the State Secretary in charge of foreign affairs and human rights (under the authority of the minister of Foreign Affairs, Bernard Kouchner). She graduated from the Institut d'études politiques in 2000, and then worked at the Paris Town Hall and the French National Assembly before becoming administrator at the French Senate in 2002.
- Thomas Hammarberg
Thomas Hammarberg is a Swedish diplomat and human rights activist. He is currently the Commissioner for Human Rights at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. He took up his position on 1 April 2006, succeeding the first Commissioner, Alvaro Gil-Robles. Prior to his appointment, Hammarberg had spent several decades working on the advancement of human rights in Europe and worldwide. He had been Secretary General of the Stockholm-based Olof Palme International Center (2002-05), …
- Hina Jilani
Hina Jilani (born 1953 in Lahore) is a well-known lawyer and human-rights activist in Pakistan. She co-founded, with her sister Asma Jahangir, Pakistan's first all-female legal practice in 1980. She is also one of the founders of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. She is the United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Human Rights Defenders. In 2006, she was appointed to the UN International Fact-Finding Commission on Darfur.
- Huang Qi
Huang Qi, a Chinese webmaster and human rights activist. He was imprisoned from June 2000 to June 2005.