Global Citizenship for Human Rights - Human Rights Heroes

  GUADALUPE VAZQUEZ LUNA Guadalupe Vázquez Luna, also known as Lupita, is an activist from Mexico and part of the Tsotsil community, representing the Alto-Centro region in Chiapas as a member of the Indigenous Council of Government. She is also the first Tsotsil woman to receive a baton from the Las Abejas, a Mayan Christian activist group. She is a survivor of the Acteal massacre, which killed her mother, father, five brothers, grandmother, and uncle. She advocates for solutions to issues such as violence, forced disappearances, and other human rights violations. She encourages others to collaborate and join forces, especially as the government fails to protect indigenous communities. Lupita’s experience is filled with political violence and discrimination as she engages in activism as an indigenous woman.   Political violence changed Lupita’s life at 10 years old, when the Acteal massacre occurred. Prior to the Acteal massacre, she remembers a relatively happy childhood, growing up

MUNIR SAID THALIB Munir Said (December 8, 1965 Malang, East Java - September 7, 2004), affectionately known simply as Munir, was one of Indonesia's most famous human rights and anti-corruption activists. Munir was assassinated in 2004 while travelling to Utrecht University to pursue a master's degree in international law and human rights. Munir was born into a family of Hadhrami Arab and Javanese origins, from Kathiri. He studied law at Brawijaya University in Malang in the province of East Java, and later started off his career in 1989 as a legal aid officer in the East Java provincial capital, Surabaya. Munir first came to public prominence at the end of the Suharto period through his role in the campaign that ensued when, in late 1997 and early ’98, two dozen pro-democracy activists were abducted in suspicious circumstances. At the height of this campaign, Munir founded the human rights organisation Kontras (Commission for Disappearances and Victims of Violence) with

  NAJMEH VAHEDI AND HODA AMID Najmeh Vahedi is a sociologist and currently studying for her postgraduate degree in women’s studies and Hoda Amid is a lawyer. The two women human rights defenders ran educational workshops together on “terms of marriage” to educate women on their marital and familial legal rights in Iran. Hoda Amid is a lawyer and women’s rights defender, who had also played a prominent role in educating Iranian women of their rights. Najmeh Vahedi is a women’s rights defender and sociologist, currently studying for her postgraduate degree in women’s studies. She has been active in raising awareness on social issues in the field of women’s rights, especially the value of women's work in the home. As a human rights defenders they has been involved in organising and running educational workshops on "terms of marriage" to educate women on their marital and legal rights in Iran. Hoda Amid and Najmeh Vahedi have also been active in empowering women and

  Eren Keskin (born 24 April 1959, Bursa, Turkey) is a lawyer and prominent human rights activist in Turkey. She is the Co-Chair of the Human Rights Association (İHD). She is also the founder of the Legal Aid Bureau against Sexual Harassment and Rape in Custody. Under the influence of her family, she grew up with a sympathy for leftist politics. Studying at the Faculty of Law of Istanbul University, she fulfilled her childhood dream of becoming a lawyer, and began taking on political cases. For more than thirty years, Keskin has struggled for fundamental rights and freedoms in Turkey, especially for the Kurds, women and the LGBTI+ community. Keskin has played a significant role in the establishment, activation, and strengthening of civil society structures in Turkey. In the early days of her career as a lawyer, she got involved with the Human Rights Association (İHD). For years, Keskin served as the president of the Association’s Istanbul branch, before becoming İHD’s vice-pre