Ninotchka Rosca is a Filipina feminist, author, journalist, and human rights activist. best known for her 1988 novel State of War and for her activism, especially during the Martial Law dictatorship of former Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos. Rosca has been described as "one of the major players in the saga of Filipina American writers."
Barbara Smith is an American lesbian feminist and socialist who has played a significant role in Black feminism in the United States. Since the early 1970s, she has been active as a scholar, activist, critic, lecturer, author, and publisher of Black feminist thought. She has also taught at numerous colleges and universities for 25 years. Smith's essays, reviews, articles, short stories and literary criticism have appeared in a range of publications, including The New York Times Book Review, The Black Scholar, Ms., Gay Community News, The Guardian, The Village Voice, Conditions and The Nation. She has a twin sister, Beverly Smith, who is also a lesbian feminist activist and writer.
Kathy Kelly is an American peace activist, pacifist and author, one of the founding members of Voices in the Wilderness, and, until the campaign closed in 2020, a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence. As part of peace team work in several countries, she has traveled to Iraq twenty-six times, notably remaining in combat zones during the early days of both US–Iraq wars.
Ágnes Osztolykán is a Hungarian politician and Romani activist. She was a member of the National Assembly of Hungary for the LMP – Hungary's Green Party between 2010 and 2014.
Women played a variety of roles in the Arab Spring, but its impact on women and their rights is unclear. The Arab Spring was a series of demonstrations, protests, and civil wars against authoritarian regimes that started in Tunisia and spread to much of the Arab world. The leaders of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen were overthrown; Bahrain has experienced sustained civil disorder, and the protests in Syria have become a civil war. Other Arab countries experienced protests as well.
Josephine Obiajulu Okei-Odumakin is a Nigerian women's rights activist. She is the president of the human rights groups, Women Arise for Change Initiative and the Campaign for Democracy.
Salwa Bugaighis was a Libyan human rights and political activist. She was assassinated in Benghazi, Libya on 25 June 2014.
Siti Musdah Mulia is an Indonesian women's rights activist and professor of religion. She was the first woman appointed as a research professor at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, and is currently a lecturer of Islamic political thought at the School of Graduate Studies at Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University. Since 2007, Musdah has served as chairperson of the NGO Indonesian Conference on Religion and Peace, which aims to promote interfaith dialogue in Indonesia. She also served as director of the Megawati Institute, a think-tank established by former president Megawati Soekarnoputri.
Androula Christofidou Henriques is a Cypriot activist who campaigns against human trafficking.
Ghulam Sughra is a Pakistani activist.
Hawa Abdallah Mohammed Salih is a Sudanese activist. She was born in North Darfur but had to leave due to fighting between government forces and Darfuri rebels. She moved to Abu Shouk internally displaced persons camp, where she worked with United Nations officials and the American NGO IRC to spread information and awareness about the conditions in the camp. For her work she was arrested three times, and kidnapped twice by National Security and detained, including a time in 2011 when she was held for two months and tortured and raped in a state prison in Khartoum. She had to flee Sudan in 2011.
Jo Hanson (1918–2007) was an American environmental artist and activist. She lived in San Francisco, California. She was known for using urban trash to create works of art.
Nisha Ayub is a Malaysian transgender rights activist. Ayub is the co-founder of the community-run SEED Foundation and transgender grassroots campaign Justice for Sisters and she was awarded the prestigious International Women of Courage Award in 2016.
Valarie Kaur is an American activist, documentary filmmaker, lawyer, educator, and faith leader. She is the founder of the Revolutionary Love Project. Kaur's debut book, See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love, was published in June 2020. The book expands upon Kaur's TED Talk.
Rebecca Kabugho is a Congolese activist who was detained by the government. She was said to be one of the youngest prisoners of conscience and she was given an International Women of Courage Award in 2017.
Tarana Burke is an American activist from New York City, who started the MeToo movement. In 2006, Burke began using MeToo to help other women with similar experiences to stand up for themselves. Over a decade later, in 2017, #MeToo became a viral hashtag when Alyssa Milano and other women began using it to tweet about the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse cases. The phrase and hashtag quickly developed into a broad-based, and eventually international movement.
Marini De Livera is a Sri Lankan lawyer and social activist who also served as former chairperson of the National Child Protection Authority (NCPA) in Sri Lanka. In 2019, she was awarded the International Women of Courage Award by the United States Department of State.
Amna Guellali is a jurist and Libyan-Tunisian human rights activist.
Rodjaraeg Wattanapanit is a Thai free speech activist and bookstore owner. She was a co-founder of the organisation Creating Awareness for Enhanced Democracy, an organization based out of her bookstore that aims to facilitate the free exchange of ideas. In 2016 she received the International Women of Courage Award.
Najla Mohammed El Mangoush is a Libyan diplomat and lawyer. She was Libya's foreign minister in Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh's government from 15 March 2021 until her dismissal on 28 August 2023. El Mangoush is Libya's first female foreign minister, and the fifth woman to hold the position of a foreign minister in the Arab World.
