AMINA FILALI
Sixteen-year-old Amina Filali became a cause célèbre for
Moroccan women's rights activists when she committed
suicide by swallowing rat poison after she was forced
to marry her rapist in accordance with a court order. Her act triggered a human
rights campaign -- including a sit-in outside Parliament, a petition, and a
Facebook group -- to repeal Article 475 in Morocco's penal code, which allows
men to escape punishment for crimes if they wed their victims. One week after
Filali died in the northwestern city of Larache, hundreds of women's rights
advocates filled
the streets in the capital, Rabat, to protest the retrograde law.
MANAL AL-SHARIF
Computer security consultant Manal al-Sharif made headlines
in May 2011 when a colleague filmed
her driving a car in Khobar, Saudi
Arabia, as part of her advocacy campaign for Saudi women's right to drive. The video was posted on
YouTube and Facebook, and it soon spread like wildfire. Four days later, about 600,000 people had
already watched the footage. Although officials jailed
her for nine days as punishment for breaking the prohibition on
female drivers in Saudi Arabia -- the only country in the world with such a ban -- her actions
successfully galvanized a rare bout of popular protest in the kingdom. On June
17, several dozen Saudi women got
behind the wheel to repeat Sharif's act of defiance.
SALWA EL-HUSSEINI,
SAMIRA IBRAHIM, and RASHA ABDEL RAHMAN
On March 9, 2011, Salwa el-Husseini, Samira Ibrahim, and
Rasha Abdel Rahman were just peaceful protesters at a sit-in at Tahrir Square --
a small group of thousands who had
gathered to protest against the ruling military regime. But that changed when
they were arrested
by the Egyptian military along with 15 other female activists, strip-searched,
and subjected to "virginity tests" in which the hymen is forcefully penetrated
to check for blood. The three broke long-standing social taboos by speaking out
about their treatment: Husseini agreed to be filmed as she recounted
what happened at a news conference, while Abdel Rahman gave graphic details
of her abuse in court. Although a military tribunal cleared
the doctor who performed the tests of all charges, Ibrahim won a major victory when
a Cairo administrative court heard her case and banned
virginity tests on female detainees in military prisons.
NAJWA FITURI
Pediatric consultant Najwa Fituri is in charge of
treating premature babies at the al-Jalaa maternity hospital in Benghazi, Libya,
but when the revolution against Muammar al-Qaddafi descended into a bloody civil
war, she heeded a new calling: smuggling drugs to
treat anti-Qaddafi fighters. A member of the female empowerment group Women for
Libya, Fituri hopes to be part of a new generation of Libyan women. "If [women]
are qualified, they should be leaders of Libya," she told the BBC in
December. "Everyone has the right to dream."
RAZAN ZAITOUNEH
Without the perseverance of human rights lawyer Razan
Zaitouneh, the world would be even more in the dark about Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad's killings and torture of civilian protesters. Her daily
reporting on the Assad regime's atrocities -- which she posted to her website, the
Syrian Human Rights Information Link -- served as a critical source for
foreign media. Although forced to go
into hiding in March 2011 after the government accused her of being a
foreign agent, Zaitouneh was awarded the Anna Politkovskaya Award
for her human rights activism in a conflict zone, and she was a co-recipient of last year's Sakharov
Prize for Freedom of Thought. Foreign Policy also honored her in 2011 as one of its top 100
Global Thinkers. "I'm very proud to be Syrian and to be part of these
historical days, and to feel all that greatness inside my people," she said
in a video
accepting the award. "We highly appreciate all the help … of those who supported
us in any way around the world."
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