Global Citizenship for Human Rights - Human Rights Heroes

  VOJIN DIMITRIJEVIC Vojin Dimitrijević was born on July 9, 1932 in Rijeka (then in Italy, today in Croatia). Vojin Dimitrijević (July 9, 1932 - October 5, 2012) was a professor of law, public intellectual and prominent Serbian human rights activist and expert in international law. He was one of the most sincere and persistent human rights fighters in Serbia   Dimitrijevic was the director of the Belgrade Center for Human Rights, a Serbian NGO opposed to Slobodan Milosevic's regime. He has held that position since the beginning of 1995.   In 1956 he graduated from the Faculty of Law, University of Belgrade, where he received his doctorate in 1965 and continued to work as a professor from 1960 to 1998. He was ordered to retire early in 1998, while a full professor, for opposing the newly enacted and repressive Law on Universities. Since 1995 he has been the director of the Belgrade Center for Human Rights, and since 2005 a professor at the Faculty of Law of the Union U...

  HARRIET TUBMAN (1822-1913) Harriet Tubman was an escaped enslaved woman who became a “conductor” on the Underground Railroad, leading enslaved people to freedom before the Civil War, all while carrying a bounty on her head. But she was also a nurse, a Union spy and a women’s suffrage supporter. She became a well-known speaker on the experiences of slavery and an advocate for the rights of African Americans and black women. Tubman is one of the most recognized icons in American history and her legacy has inspired countless people from every race and background. Tubman’s exact birth date is unknown, but estimates place it between 1820 and 1822 in Dorchester County, Maryland. Born Araminta Ross, the daughter of Harriet Green and Benjamin Ross, Tubman had eight siblings. By age five, Tubman’s owners rented her out to neighbors as a domestic servant. Early signs of her resistance to slavery and its abuses came at age twelve when she intervened to keep her master from beating a...

  MALALA YOUSAFZAI (b. 1997) Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani education advocate who, at the age of 17 in 2014, became the youngest person to win the Nobel Peace Prize after surviving an assassination attempt by the Taliban. Yousafzai became an advocate for girls’ education when she herself was still a child, which resulted in the Taliban issuing a death threat against her. On October 9, 2012, a gunman shot Malala when she was traveling home from school. She survived and has continued to speak out on the importance of education. In 2013, she gave a speech to the United Nations and published her first book,  I Am Malala . Malala Yousafzai was born on July 12, 1997 in Mingora, Pakistan. Although it was not always easy to raise a girl child in Pakistan, Malala Yousafzai’s father insisted that she received all of the same opportunities afforded to boy children. Her father was a teacher and education advocate that ran a girls’ school in their village. Due to his infl...

  ALEXYA SALVADOR (b. 1980) A trans woman in Brazil, one of the most dangerous places in the world for the LGBTQ+ community. Alexya Salvador, was born as Alexander Salvador in Mairiporã, a rural municipality on the outskirts of São Paulo. Salvador grew up under the name Alexander. According to her own statements, she identified herself as an LGBT person for years. In her twenties she realized that she was a trans woman, but was initially only able to come out as homosexual because of her father, who at the time rejected transgender lifestyles . At the age of 28 she had sex reassignment measures carried out on her and has lived under the name Alexya Salvador ever since. She declares her gender identity as transgender and not transsexual . Alexya Salvador is a public school teacher, vice president of Brazilian Association of Homotransaffective Families (ABRAFH) and a mother. In 2015, she was appointed assistant pastor at the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) in São Paulo, ...