Shirin Ebadi is an Iranian lawyer and human-rights activist who founded the Defenders of Human Rights Center in Iran. She was the first female judge in Iran, and the first Iranian and the first Muslim woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Ebadi was born in 1947 in Hamadan, Iran. A year later, her family …
Ella Baker was an African-American civil rights and human rights activist who worked with the NAACP and co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Baker was born in 1903 in Norfolk, Virginia and grew up in North Carolina. Her grandmother would tell her stories about …
Funmilayo Ransome Kuti was a Nigerian teacher, feminist and political leader who was the leading advocate of women’s rights in her country during the first half of the 20th century. Ransome-Kuti was born Frances Abigail Olufunmilayo Thomas in 1900 in Abeokuta, Egbaland (now Nigeria). She became the first female student at the Abeokuta Grammar School, …
Syeda Ghulam Fatima is a Pakistani human and labour rights activist, known for her work in ending bonded labour in brick kilns. She is General Secretary of Lahore-based Bonded Labour Liberation Front Pakistan (BLLF). Fatima is the daughter of a trade-unionist and small-scale railway employee Syed Deedar Hussain. She holds a Masters Degree in Political …