Mary Therese Winifred Robinson is an Irish politician who was the 7th president of Ireland, serving from December 1990 to September 1997, the first woman to hold this office. Prior to her election, Robinson was a senator in Seanad Éireann between 1969 and 1989, and a councilor on Dublin Corporation from 1979 to 1983. Though briefly affiliated with the Labour Party while a senator, she became the first independent candidate to win the presidency and the first not to have had the support of Fianna Fáil. Following her time as president, Robinson became the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997 to 2002.
Dr Timothy Charles Ayrton Tannock is a British psychiatrist, independent politician and former Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for London.
Hina Jilani is a lawyer on the Supreme Court of Pakistan and a human rights activist from Lahore, Punjab. She is the co-founder of Pakistan's first all-women law firm, Pakistan's first legal aid center, and the Women's Action Forum.
Asma Jilani Jahangir was a Pakistani human rights lawyer and social activist who co-founded and chaired the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and AGHS Legal Aid Cell. Jahangir was known for playing a prominent role in the Lawyers' Movement and served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief and as a trustee at the International Crisis Group.
Irene Zubaida Khan is a Bangladeshi lawyer appointed as of August 2020 to be the United Nations Special Rapporteur for freedom of expression and opinion, the first woman appointed to this mandate. She previously served as the seventh Secretary General of Amnesty International. In 2011, she was elected Director-General of the International Development Law Organization (IDLO) in Rome, an intergovernmental organization that works to promote the rule of law, and sustainable development. She was a consulting editor of The Daily Star in Bangladesh from 2010 to 2011.
Fionnuala Ní Aoláin is an Irish academic lawyer specialising in human rights law. She is the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism for the United Nations Human Rights Council since August 1, 2017.
A human rights defender or human rights activist is a person who, individually or with others, acts to promote or protect human rights. They can be journalists, environmentalists, whistleblowers, trade unionists, lawyers, teachers, housing campaigners, participants in direct action, or just individuals acting alone. They can defend rights as part of their jobs or in a voluntary capacity. As a result of their activities, human rights defenders (HRDs) are often subjected to reprisals including smears, surveillance, harassment, false charges, arbitrary detention, restrictions on the right to freedom of association, physical attack, and even murder. In 2020, at least 331 HRDs were murdered in 25 countries. The international community and some national governments have attempted to respond to this violence through various protections, but violence against HRDs continues to rise. Women human rights defenders and environmental human rights defenders face greater repression and risks than human rights defenders working on other issues.
Front Line Defenders, or The International Foundation for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, is an Irish-based human rights organisation founded in Dublin, Ireland in 2001 to protect those who work non-violently to uphold the human rights of others as outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The government of Belarus is criticized for its human rights violations and persecution of non-governmental organisations, independent journalists, national minorities, and opposition politicians. In a testimony to the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, former United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice labeled Belarus as one of the world's six "outposts of tyranny". In response, the Belarusian government called the assessment "quite far from reality". During 2020 Belarusian presidential election and protests, the number of political prisoners recognized by Viasna Human Rights Centre rose dramatically to 1062 as of 16 February 2022. Several people died after the use of unlawful and abusive force by law enforcement officials during 2020 protests. According to Amnesty International, the authorities didn't investigate violations during protests but instead harassed those who challenged their version of events. In July 2021, the authorities launched a campaign against the remaining non-governmental organizations, liquidating at least 270 of them by October, including all previously registered human rights organizations in the country.
Professor Michael O'Flaherty is the current Director of the European Union Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA). The FRA is the EU's human rights advisory body, based in Vienna, Austria. An Irish human rights lawyer, O’Flaherty was a member from 2004 to 2012 of the United Nations Human Rights Committee (HRC), the expert body that oversees compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Again nominated by Ireland in 2008, O'Flaherty was re-elected to the HRC with the highest number of votes achieved by any candidate. On 19 September 2011 he took up appointment as the third Chief Commissioner of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (NIHRC), the statutory national human rights institution for Northern Ireland. He resigned as chief commissioner in October 2013.
Averil Power is an Irish former politician who served as a Senator for the Industrial and Commercial Panel from 2011 to 2016. She first held office as a member of Fianna Fáil, but left the party in 2015 and sat in the Seanad as an Independent for the rest of her term. She stood as an Independent candidate for Dáil Éireann at the 2016 general election, but was not elected.
Naji Ali Hassan Fateel is a Bahraini human rights activist and member of the Board of Directors of the Bahraini human rights NGO Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights (BYSHR). Since 2007 he has been imprisoned, tortured and the target of death threats during the Bahraini uprising (2011–present). He has been the subject of urgent appeals by international human rights organisations and the United nations special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders.
Agnès Callamard is a French human rights activist who is the Secretary General of Amnesty International. She was previously the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council, and the former Director of the Columbia University Global Freedom of Expression project.
The Ulster University's Transitional Justice Institute (TJI), is a law-led multidisciplinary research institute of Ulster University which is physically located at the Jordanstown, and Magee campuses. It was created in 2003, making it the first and longest-established university research centre on this theme. In the 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF) Law at Ulster University was ranked 4th overall in the UK. Ulster was ranked first for impact in law with 100% of impact rated as world-leading, the only University to achieve this in law.
Michel Forst is a French national actively involved in the defence of human rights. Former Secretary General of the French national human rights institution, he was the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders from June 2014 to March 2020.
Leilani Farha is a Canadian lawyer who is the Global Director of THE SHIFT, a housing initiative. Between June 2014 and April 2020, she was the United Nations special rapporteur on adequate housing.
Yu Wensheng is a Chinese human rights lawyer based in Beijing. He is known for criticizing the Chinese Communist Party and taking up politically sensitive cases against the government.
The legal career of Mary Robinson, which occurred prior to her becoming President of Ireland in 1990, lasted over 22 years. Made a barrister in 1967, Robinson specialised in constitutional, criminal, and European community law.
Seán Binder is a German-born human rights activist and certified rescue diver who has spent most of his life in Ireland. The son of a refugee father from Vietnam and a German mother, he grew up in Ireland and later studied at universities in Dublin and London. From 2017 to 2018, he volunteered with a humanitarian non-governmental organization on Lesbos island, Greece, assisting refugees arriving in small boats from the nearby Turkish coast.
Manuchehr Kholiqnazarov, sometimes spelled Manuchehr Kholiknazarov, is a Tajik human rights activist and lawyer from Gorno-Badakhshan, an autonomous region of Tajikistan. His 2022 arrest and conviction following peaceful protests in Khorog led to international condemnation from human rights organisations.
