Global Citizenship for Human Rights - Human Rights Heroes

  AYSE KASIKIRIK Ayşe Kaşıkırık was born in 1988 in Istanbul. She completed her undergraduate education at Istanbul Technical University, Department of Management Engineering with honors degree. She successfully defended her thesis on “Municipal Budgets with a Gender Equality Perspective: Fatih Municipality” in the Political Science and Public Administration graduate program at Istanbul University Institute of Social Sciences in 2017. She is at the dissertation stage in her doctorate (PhD) education in Istanbul University Political Science and Public Administration program. Her PhD thesis is about on women poverty at urban area. Between 2017-2020, she carried out projects with the focus on women-friendly cities, gender equality, gender responsive budgeting and equal representation of women as the project coordinator at KA.DER (Association for Supporting Women Candidates). She has managed more than 25 national and international projects in her professional life for more than 1...

  RAZAN ZAITOUNEH Razan Zaitouneh (born 29 April 1977) is a prominent human rights lawyer, activist, and journalist in Syria. Razan has dedicated her life to defending political prisoners, documenting crimes against humanity, and helping others free themselves from oppression and starvation. She became a lawyer to defend the ideals she valued most – justice, freedom, and truth.   Razan’s involvement in human rights advocacy began early in her career, leading to the government banning her from leaving the country in 2002.   In 2005, Razan founded the Syrian Human Rights Information Link (SHRIL), Syria’s first public documentation resource for human rights violations. SHRIL unveiled numerous injustices faced by Syrians, putting the government under the microscope for the rest of the world to see. As resistance grew into civil war, with the use of chemical weapons and other tools of destruction, she founded the Violations Documentation Center (VDC), which works to docu...

  GIUSEPPE IMPASTATO Giuseppe Impastato was born on 5 January 1948 in Cinisi in the province of Palermo, into a mafia family. He was a Sicilian journalist and activist.    His father Luigi had been sent into internal exile during the fascist era and was a close friend of a mafia boss, Gaetano Badalamenti. His father's brother-in-law, Cesare Manzella, was a major mafia boss who was killed in the car bomb attack in 1963.   Still an adolescent, he broke off relations with his father - who kicked him out of the house - and initiated a series of political and cultural anti-mafia activities. In 1965 he founded the newsletter "L'Idea Socialista" and joined the left-wing PSIUP party. From 1968 onwards he took a leading role in the activities of the new revolutionary groups. He leads struggles by Cinisi peasants whose land had been expropriated to build the third runway at Palermo airport, as well as disputes involving building workers and the unemployed. In 1975 he...

  BRANKICA STANKOVIC Brankica Stanković (born October 1975) is a prominent Serbian investigative journalist reporting on topics of crime and political corruption in Serbia. She is the main writer of the investigative television news programme Insajder (Serbian for "Insider") produced by the B92 television between 2004 and 2015, and by Stanković's own news production company since 2016. Her reports led to much controversy, and she routinely receives death threats. For that reason, she has been placed under 24 hours police protection since December 2009. Brankica is the only journalist in Serbia who lives with the 24-hour police security. She began her career as a journalist for radio and television company RTV Studio B in 1996, where she spent a year. In 1997, she switched to Radio B92, where she has been working ever since. During the 1990s, B92 was a prominent pro-democracy news broadcasting company, opposed to the corrupt regime of then-president Slobodan Miloševi...

  EMMA BONINO Emma Bonino is Vice-Chair of the Italian Senate. She was born on the 9th of March 1948 in Bra (Italy). During her career, she has conducted several international human rights campaigns, among the most successful – on the legalization of abortion, the ‘Stop FGM’ campaign to ban Female Genital Mutilation, and the establishment of the International Criminal Court.   For almost thirty years Emma Bonino's political activities have been characterized by the rigorous practice of "active non-violence", defined and adopted by Mahatma Gandhi and now practiced by the Transnational Radical Party. This explains her frequent participation in the hunger and thirst strikes, as well as in the acts of civil disobedience, that have accompanied the main political campaigns launched by her party. Active non-violence aims to force the institutions to respect themselves and their laws. Acts of civil disobedience aim to show the inadequacy or the iniquity of a particular law,...