Global Citizenship for Human Rights - Human Rights Heroes

  MICHELLE BACHELET (b. 1951) Verónica Michelle Bachelet Jeria   is a Chilean politician who has served as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights since 2018. She has a long history of activism. In 1975, she was detained and tortured for weeks after speaking out against Chile’s military dictatorship. She went on to serve as Chile’s president from 2006-2010 and 2014-2018. for the Socialist Party of Chile. She is the first woman to hold the Chilean presidency. After leaving the presidency in 2010 and while not immediately reelectable, 2011, Bachelet was appointed as the first Executive Director of UN Women - the newly created UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women - where she stayed until announcing her second presidential run in 2013. She focused, inter alia, on economic empowerment, tackling violence against women, and women's participation in security issues, including through Security Council Resolution 1325. She has recently pledged t...

  NADIA MURAD (b. 1993) Nadia Murad was born into a farming family in Kojo, Iraq. She belongs to the Yazidi ethnic and religious minority. On August 2014, Murad’s village of Kawjū (Kocho) was captured by ISIL. The men, including six of Murad’s brothers, were massacred. Some older women, including Murad’s mother, were also killed. The rest of the women, including Murad, were taken to Mosul, Iraq, the largest city held by ISIL at the time, to be marketed as sex slaves. Murad was bought and sold several times before escaping in November 2014. A fter escaping, she began her life as an activist. On 16 December 2015, Murad spoke to the United Nations Security Council about human trafficking and conflict. This was the first time the Council was ever briefed on human trafficking. She spread awareness about human trafficking and refugees, despite the dangers of speaking out. In 2016 the UN appointed her Goodwill Ambassador for the Dignity of Survivors of Human Trafficking. ...

  YOUTH INITIATIVE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS Youth Initiative for Human Rights (YIHR) is a regional network of non-governmental organisations with programmes in Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo. The headquarters of the Youth Initiative for Human Rights are situated in Belgrade, Zagreb, Podgorica, Sarajevo and Prishtina. Since their foundation in 2003, the Youth Initiative for Human Rights has been fighting for the same values. The basic values of the Initiative are truth, justice, accountability, equality, freedom, democracy and peace. The focus of the Youth Initiative for Human Rights is on societies and citizens, above all the youth, who are least familiar with the events and war crimes committed during the 1990s, where nationalist ideologies, which led to wars and where all sides celebrate their war criminals as “heroes”, still prevail. The regional network of the Youth Initiative for Human Rights has won numerous national and international award...

  GRETA THUNBERG (b. 2003) Arguably the most famous human rights activist right now, Greta Thunberg travels the world to draw attention to the climate crisis. Only 17 years old, she began her activism in 2018 by skipping school to stand outside the Swedish Parliament calling for action. Other students joined and the movement went global. She was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 and won Amnesty International’s top human rights award.  In focusing on climate change, Thunberg draws attention to the fact that the climate crisis is a human rights crisis.

  TRAN MINH NHAT (b. 1988) A Vietnamese journalist and human rights activist from the province of Lam Dong in the south of Vietnam. Nhat works with the Vietnam Redemptorist News promoting economic, social, and cultural rights in Vietnam. He was arrested in 2011 for “carrying out activities aimed at overthrowing the people’s administration” under Article 79 of Vietnam's Criminal Code due to his writings in favor of free speech and a pluralist political system in Vietnam. He was sentenced to four years in prison with additional three years of probation. He was released on August 28, 2015 after completing his prison sentence where he has faced constant harassment by the police. After his release, the threats against him and his family continued. In 2017, a warrant for his arrest was issued, claiming he had breached the terms of his probation. In his case history on Front Line Defenders, Nhat’s status is listed as “threatened.”