Palestinian Manal Shqair says her activist journey began at birth when her father refused to name her because she was a girl.
“He was shocked,” she said. “He wasn’t expecting to have a girl. He was expecting to have a boy. He even put the blame on my mom that there’s something wrong with her body that she gives birth to girls but not to boys. He got outraged when I arrived in this world, and he refused to name me.”
At first, Ounaysa Arabi joined street demonstrations to protest the latest military coup in Sudan. She soon lost interest. Hope in the change that most matters to her quickly ebbed away.
She heard demonstrators trying to degrade military and police by calling them “chicks” and felt furious. Internet blockages obstructed her attempts with other young women to organize among themselves. She decided to wait it out.
Women were at the forefront of popular uprisings that ousted the 30-year regime of Omar al-Bashir in Sudan in 2019, so you might expect that they could openly assert their rights, says Ilaf Nasreldin.
In 2014, Musu Kamara stood for election as president of her high school student council. What happened on the eve of the vote would shape her path in life.
That day, the high school principal cancelled the election, announced a new one would be held and asked that only boys apply as candidates.
At first, Dildar Kaya found her work very difficult. “You get very lonely very fast,” she said.
She had found a place where she could put her knowledge, skills and passion for minority rights, women’s rights, and mental health services to good use.
Firm words of compassion define Amy Lira’s activism for survivors of sexual violence. “We believe you. It’s not your fault. You are not alone.”
Some of the sweetest words to Norwu Kolu Harris are when she hears people mention her name and what she does and they say, “don’t mess with Norwu, she’s a feminist.”
It’s a reward for her mission to make people realize that all girls and women deserve dignity and respect, that their human rights are to be taken seriously, that jokes about rape are unacceptable.
Despair, says Nicole Musimbi, is a weapon used to keep people mired in conflict.
That’s why she is determined to inspire hope among other young people in her work in a conflict zone where death and danger are constant threats.
Aishatu Kabu has a passion for her own community-based organization for women and girls displaced by conflict in northeastern Nigeria. The passion helps her carry on despite stigma and threats.
Social worker Michelle Carbajal is blunt about Honduras, with its extreme levels of poverty and violence, widespread legal impunity, and femicide so high that busloads of women flee north to seek asylum in the United States. “The country is a mess,” she says.
Grace Ikarak is a lawyer by profession. One of her success stories is the time she helped persuade a family to accept seven cows rather than a girl as compensation for the murder of a family member.
Eliminating the practice of “girl child compensation” among tribes in the Eastern Equatoria state of South Sudan is one of Grace’s goals while working as a lawyer and advocate for women’s rights.
Vian Darwish’s dedication as a champion for Yazidi survivors began when she was a 23-year-old college student and made the biggest decision of her life. “I started from zero - zero money, zero background, zero agencies’ support,” she says.
“I’m hearing gunshots outside my house,” Nicole Musimbi told the online gathering of young women in the 2021 Sister-to-Sister Mentorship Program. She might have to abruptly sign off.