Niall MacDermot
Niall MacDermot (10 September 1916 – 22 February 1996) was a British Labour Party politician. MacDermot was educated at Rugby School and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and served in the Intelligence Corps during the Second World War (as a ‘nazi’ hunter). He was first elected to the House of Commons as Member of Parliament at a by-election in 1957. He returned to Parliament as MP for Derby North at a by-election in 1962. He was Financial Secretary to the Treasury from 1964 to 1967, and retired from the Commons at the 1970 general election.
From 1970 to 1990, he was Secretary-General of the International Commission of Jurists, succeeding Sean MacBride. During this 20 years MacDermot challenged governments of all stripes to respect the rule of law and stood up to dictators to defend the rights and lives of the oppressed,″ MacDermot was among the first major voices to call attention to the disappearances and other repression in Chile and Argentina during the 1970s. Under his leadership, the Commission criticized the Reagan administration for ignoring the World Court ruling against U.S. aid to Nicaraguan Contra rebels, spoke out for dissidents in the Soviet Bloc, and in 1985, issued a report alleging brutality against Palestinian inmates in a West Bank prison. He was the key mover behind the UN Convention against Torture, even informally drafting large parts of the text. The Commission frequently criticized South African authorities during the years of apartheid. MacDermot led the jurists in charging Iranian secret police under the shah with becoming a law unto themselves, then in accusing Iranian revolutionary tribunals of violating all recognized principles of justice.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niall_MacDermot
https://apnews.com/article/c5104ea5a1816d24fdb934ea16b7c684
Werner Lottje
Werner Lottje (1946 – 2004) was for many years founding head of the human rights department of the Social Service Agency of the Protestant Church in Germany (EKD) and frequently reminded the church of its responsibility to protect human rights. Werner Lottje influenced human rights work nationally: He played a major part in founding the Human Rights Forum, the platform of civil-society human rights organizations in Germany, and promoted the foundation of the German Institute for Human Rights, becoming its first committee president. At the international level he pioneered the idea of giving young lawyers from the South a chance to work for an international NGO. He was crucial in the founding or development of many organisations such as: the human rights committee of the World Council of Churches, HURIDOCS, International Alert, the International Service for Human Rights, OMCT and the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders. Werner Lottje took big efforts to emphasize the cross-sectional function of human rights. Due to his courageous and non-bureaucratic commitment, many livesof HRDs in danger were saved. On 3 November 2013 the first annual Werner Lottje Lecture was held, an initiative by Bread for the World and the German Institute for Human Rights.
And a lot more about Werner Lottje: the great German human rights defender
https://www.facebook.com/brotfuerdiewelt/videos/723785547648988
Hansa Mehta
Hansa Jivraj Mehta (3 July 1897 – 4 April 1995) was a reformist, social activist, educator, independence activist, feminist and writer from India.
Hansa Mehta organized the picketing of shops selling foreign clothes and liquor, and participated in other freedom movement activities in line with the advice of Mahatma Gandhi. She was even arrested and sent to jail by the British along with her husband in 1932. Later she was elected to Bombay Legislative Council. After independence, she was among the 15 women who were part of the constituent assembly that drafted the Indian Constitution.
Hansa became president of All India Women’s Conference in 1945–46. In her presidential address at the All India Women’s Conference convention held in Hyderabad, she proposed a Charter of Women’s Rights. She held different posts in India from 1945 to 1960 – the vice-chancellor of SNDT Women’s University, member of All India Secondary Board of Education, president of Inter University Board of India and vice-chancellor of Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, among others.
Hansa represented India on the Nuclear Sub-Committee on the status of women in 1946. As the Indian delegate on the UN Human Rights Commission in 1947–48, she was responsible for changing the language of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights from “all men are created equal” (Eleanor Roosevelt’s preferred phrase) to “all human beings”, highlighting the need for gender equality. Hansa later went on to become the vice chairman of the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations in 1950. She was also a member of the Executive Board of UNESCO.
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hansa_Jivraj_Mehta
Bertha Lutz
Bertha Maria Júlia Lutz (August 2, 1894 – September 16, 1976) was a Brazilian zoologist, politician, and diplomat. Lutz became a leading figure in both the Pan American feminist movement and human rights movement. She was instrumental in gaining women’s suffrage in Brazil and represented her country at the United Nations Conference on International Organization, signing her name to the United Nations Charter. In addition to her political work, she was a naturalist at the National Museum of Brazil, specializing in poison dart frogs. She has three frog species and two lizard species named after her. n 1919, a year after returning from Paris, Lutz founded the League for Intellectual Emancipation of Women and was appointed to represent the Brazilian government in the Female International Council of the International Labour Organization (ILO). Lutz later created the Brazilian Federation for Women’s Progress (1922), a political group that advocated for Brazilian women’s rights, most importantly, their right to vote, around the world. Lutz served as a delegate to the Pan-American Conference of Women in Baltimore, Maryland, that same year, and would continue to attend women’s rights conferences in the years to follow. In 1925, she was elected president of the Inter-American Union of Women. Lutz’s involvement in the fight for women’s suffrage made her the leading figurehead of women’s rights until the end of 1931, when Brazilian women finally gained the right to vote.
In 1936, Lutz became one of the few Brazilian Congresswomen of the time. The first initiative that Lutz presented while in Congress was the creation of the “Statute of women”, a committee to analyse every Brazilian law and statute to ensure none violated the rights of women. Lutz, however, was unable to push forward her measures when Getúlio Vargas was reinstated as dictator in 1937, which led to a suspension of parliament, and the Statute project. Lutz nonetheless continued her diplomatic career. She was one of the four women to sign the United Nations Charter at the Inter-American Conference of Women held in San Francisco in 1945 and served as vice president of the Inter-American Commission of Women from 1953 to 1959.
During the 1945 United Nations Conference on International Organization in San Francisco, Lutz, along with Minerva Bernardino, fought for the inclusion of the word “women” in the preamble to the United Nations Charter. The first draft didn’t mention the word “women”, and Lutz and other women from Latin America insisted in the final clause read: ” …faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small”. She further proposed the creation of a special commission of Women whose purpose it would be to analyse the “legal status of Women” around the world in order to better understand the inequalities they face and be better prepared to combat them. She is credited with being the most prominent and tenacious advocate for the inclusion of women’s rights in the charter.
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertha_Lutz
Minerva Bernardino
Minerva Bernardino (1907 – August 29, 1998) was a diplomat from the Dominican Republic who promoted women’s rights internationally, and is best known as one of the four women to sign the original charter of the United Nations.
Bernardino began her fight for women’s rights as one of the leaders of Acción Feminista, an organization she became involved in while she was still living in the Dominican Republic. In 1935, she moved to Washington D.C. to work for the IACW. She maintained connections with Dominican Republic but stayed away for several years because of her initial opposition to Trujillo’s dictatorship. However, she returned to the country in order to pressure the solidifying regime to grant suffrage to women which it ultimately did in 1942. One of the key public moves toward women’s rights made by the regime occurred when the regime granted an invitation to the suffragist Doris Stevens, with whom Bernardino was close, to visit the country in 1938 and speak to the Senate. Bernardino continued to work with the dictatorship through its demise in 1961. She similarly supported the 12-years of continuismo of his successor Joaquín Balaguer.
By the 1940s, she was serving as the nation’s official representative to the IACW, becoming vice chair and then chair of the commission. She attended conferences as a representative of the Dominican Republic, including the 1945 San Francisco Conference, where she signed the original charter for the United Nations.
One of her achievements include the 1954 Convention on the Political Rights of Women, which asserted women’s rights to vote, run for office and hold office. Bernardino also supported international law that would ensure the equality of women in marriage and divorce, such as the Montevideo Convention on the Nationality of Married Women of 1933.
Of all her contributions, Bernardino is best known for arguing in favor of gender-inclusive language in the early stages of the UN’s development. At the 1945 United Nations Conference on International Organization, although she was technically a delegate of the Dominican Republic Bernardino entered the conference with her own agenda, representing the interests of the Inter-American Commission of Women (IACW). Bernardino and her colleague Berta Lutz were acknowledged as “instrumental” in the inclusion of the phrases “equal rights of men and women,” “faith in fundamental human rights” and “the dignity and worth of the human person” in the preamble to the UN’s charter. She is also credited with the wording “equal rights of men and women” in the preamble for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—she believed that omitting “and women” would have seemed intentional and invited discrimination.
Bernardino was also involved in creating and later chairing the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), which was established in 1946. As her career progressed, Bernardino continued to work at the UN in many different capacities. Later, Bernardino extended the scope of her work to include giving lectures at universities, writing a biographical archive of influential American women, and creating the Fundación Bernardino which would continue the fight for women’s rights in the Dominican Republic after her death.
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minerva_Bernardino
Charles Malik
Charles Habib Malik (sometimes spelled Malek) 11 February 1906 – 28 December 1987; was a Lebanese academic, diplomat, and philosopher. He served as the Lebanese representative to the United Nations, the President of the Commission on Human Rights and the United Nations General Assembly, a member of the Lebanese Cabinet, a national minister of Education and the Arts, and of Foreign Affairs and Emigration, and theologian.
Malik represented Lebanon at the San Francisco conference at which the United Nations was founded. He served as a rapporteur for the Commission on Human Rights in 1947 and 1948, when he became President of the Economic and Social Council. The same year, he helped to draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with Chair and President of the Human Rights Commission Eleanor Roosevelt. He succeeded Mrs. Roosevelt as the Human Rights Commission’s Chair. He remained as ambassador to the US and UN until 1955. He was an outspoken participant in debates in the United Nations General Assembly and often criticized the Soviet Union. After a three-year absence, he returned in 1958 to preside over the thirteenth session of the United Nations General Assembly.
Malik returned to his academic career in 1960. He travelled extensively, lectured on human rights and other subjects, and held professorships at a number of American universities including Harvard. Malik has been awarded 50 honorary degrees; the originals are in his archives in Notre Dame University-Louaize, Lebanon.
source:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Malik
Mahātmā Gandhi
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (born 2 October 1869 – died 30 January 1948) was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist and political ethicist, who employed non-violent resistance to lead the successful campaign for India’s independence from British rule, and in turn inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. The honorific Mahātmā (meaning”great-souled”, “venerable”), first applied to him in 1914 in South Africa, is now used throughout the world.
After two years in India, where he was unable to start a successful law practice, he moved to South Africa in 1893, to represent an Indian merchant in a lawsuit. He went on to live in South Africa for 21 years. It was in South Africa that Gandhi raised a family, and first employed non-violent resistance in a campaign for civil rights. In 1915, aged 45, he returned to India. He set about organising peasants, farmers, and urban labourers to protest against excessive land-tax and discrimination. Assuming leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1921, Gandhi led nationwide campaigns for easing poverty, expanding women’s rights, building religious and ethnic amity, ending untouchability, and above all for achieving Swaraj or self-rule. Bringing anti-colonial nationalism to the common Indians, Gandhi led them in challenging the British-imposed salt tax with the 400 km (250 mi) Dandi Salt March in 1930, and later in calling for the British to Quit India in 1942. He was imprisoned for many years, upon many occasions, in both South Africa and India.
In August 1947, Britain granted independence, but the British Indian Empire was partitioned into two dominions, a Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. As many displaced Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs made their way to their new lands, religious violence broke out, especially in the Punjab and Bengal. Eschewing the official celebration of independence in Delhi, Gandhi visited the affected areas, attempting to provide solace. In the months following, he undertook several fasts unto death to stop religious violence. The last of these, undertaken on 12 January 1948 when he was 78, also had the indirect goal of pressuring India to pay out some cash assets owed to Pakistan. Some Indians thought Gandhi was too accommodating. Among them was Nathuram Godse, a Hindu nationalist, who assassinated Gandhi on 30 January 1948 by firing three bullets into his chest.
Gandhi’s birthday, 2 October, is commemorated in India as Gandhi Jayanti, a national holiday, and worldwide as the International Day of Non-violence. Gandhi is commonly, though not formally, considered the Father of the Nation in India, and was commonly called Bapu (Gujarati: endearment for father, papa).
There are awards in his name but he himself did not get an HR award!. From Wikipedia: Decades later, the Nobel Committee publicly declared its regret for the omission, and admitted to deeply divided nationalistic opinion denying the award. Gandhi was nominated in 1948 but was assassinated before nominations closed. That year, the committee chose not to award the peace prize stating that “there was no suitable living candidate” and later research shows that the possibility of awarding the prize posthumously to Gandhi was discussed and that the reference to no suitable living candidate was to Gandhi. Geir Lundestad, Secretary of Norwegian Nobel Committee in 2006 said, “The greatest omission in our 106-year history is undoubtedly that Mahatma Gandhi never received the Nobel Peace prize.