Speak out

Arrested with other opponents of Pakistan's General Musharraf in November 2007, Asma Jahangir, head of the country's human-rights commission and a UN special envoy, has spent decades defending Christians and Muslims sentenced to death under harsh and capricious blasphemy laws. She shelters women whose families want to murder them -- because they deserted cruel husbands. She investigates the fate of prisoners who vanish in police custody, and battles for their release.

Once a victim of the daily brutality that characterizes life in Palestinian refugee camps, Abdelfattah Abusrour now teaches children in the camps non-violent self-expression using sports, arts and theater. His program leverages these activities to impart a sense of tolerance and empathy, and helps children develop non-violent communication patterns.

A former policeman in Burundi until he spent two years in prison because of false accusations, Pierre Claver Mbonimpa founded the Burundian Association for the Protection of Human Rights and Detained Persons (APRODH). He has campaigned against torture, addressed the plight of the 9,000 detainees waiting years for trial in the country's overcrowded jails, and organized events where police

Nora Protacio has spent over 20 years educating the urban poor on their rights in the Philippines, in particular to decent housing. She has defended tenants during eviction crises and rallied communities to press for safe water, electricity and health services. A campaigner for women's rights, Protacio also educates women and families on domestic violence issues.

As the principal voice for the victims of Russia's war in Chechnya, Anna Politkovskaya continued to report from the war's frontlines, even after death threats forced her to flee Moscow several times. In October, 2006, she was gunned down in the elevator of her apartment building in Moscow. Not only did she write regular articles exposing the torture and abductions common in the 'dirty war'

After the death of Nurit Peled-Elhanan's 13-year-old daughter, Smadar, in a Palestinian suicide bomber's attack in 1997, she became an outspoken critic of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. "My little girl was murdered because she was an Israeli by a young man who was humiliated, oppressed and desperate to the point of suicide and murder, just because he was a Palestinian. Now their blood is mixed on the stones of Jerusalem that have long been indifferent to children's blood.

Since organizing a boycott while following the death of a student protester, Otto Saki has defended human rights in Zimbabwe. He represents human rights activists: students, women, union members who face harassment, intimidation and arrest when they protest the government's growing repression. Despite police threats and intimidated judges, he also assists shantytown dwellers whose settlements are being bulldozed by the government, helping thousands of families apply to the High Court to prevent the demolitions and seek restitution.

Almir Surui, chief of the Surui tribe in the western Brazilian state of Rondonia, is only 32, but for the past 15 years, he has been fighting increasingly dangerous loggers to save the rain forest and his tribe's way of life. During the past five years, 11 tribal chiefs have been murdered there, allegedly by orders of the powerful loggers and miners they have opposed.

Disabled by polio, Ana Maria Maranon de Bohorquez has devoted 20 years to helping street children in Bolivia. She is the founder of three shelters which offer food, education and formal training in life skills. One of the shelters helps children and teenagers in drug rehabilitation. Another focuses on teenage mothers and helps them resume formal education.

A victim of childhood sexual abuse, Betty Makoni used her experience to transform the lives of girls in southern Africa by creating a girls' rights advocacy group with 30,000 members in Zimbabwe. Founded in 1998, Girl Child Network (GCN) empowers girls and works to eradicate all forms of abuse and practices that impede their full physical, emotional and spiritual growth.