#ChoosetoChallenge: It’s the Women’s Month in the King Community!
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Halla Barakat was a young American journalist in Turkey. She and her mother, Syrian opposition activist Dr. Orouba Barakat, were killed in Istanbul in 2017.
An independent investigation into the murders of 23-year-old American journalist Halla Barakat and her Syrian activist mother Orouba Barakat, who were killed in their apartment in Istanbul last year, reveals a number of irregularities in the murder case which may have been deliberately botched due to political pressure.
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Pilar Jorge de Tella emerged as a leader. She co-founded one of the most influential organizations of the time, the Feminine Club and National Women’s Congress—the meeting of various feminist groups to debate strategy and policies. Jorge de Tella took controversial political stances.
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Briceida Lemos Rivera, Nini Johana Cárdenas Rueda, and Isabel Zuleta
ACROSS THE WORLD, environmental activists defending their land, wildlife, and natural resources against large dams, industrial agriculture, and other extractive industries are increasingly faced with the specter of death on a daily basis. In 2017, nearly four environmental defenders were murdered around the globe every week—a fourfold increase in such killings since the environmental watchdog Global Witness began monitoring them in 2002, and a grim reminder of the extreme costs of a global economy driven by expansion and consumption. But these deaths were not distributed evenly. Latin America was by far the most dangerous region in the world for environmental advocates—as it has been since Global Witness began recording these murders—and among countries in this region Colombia has consistently been one of the most dangerous.
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When Leah Namugerwa turned 15 in August she celebrated by planting 200 trees – highlighting the environmental damage in her country.
Her call to action came from her increasing awareness of the widespread hunger in northern Uganda. Prolonged droughts have made the problem worse, as well as deadly landslides in eastern parts of the country.
“There are many environmental issues happening in my country, but I barely see them in media or reported by anyone,” she said.
“Media is ever reporting politics and celebrity gossip. The silence on environmental injustice seems to be intentional.
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Artemisa Xakriabá
Artemisa Xakriabá is a 19-year-old indigenous climate activist of the Xakriabá of Brazil.
Artemisa represented more than 25 million indigenous people and traditional communities from the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities at the Global Climate Strike in New York. This alliance protects 600 million hectares of the Amazon Rainforest.
Alongside Greta Thunberg, Artemisa gave a rallying cry to protect the world's largest rainforest.
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Autumn Peltier
'Water Warrior' – Autumn is a 14-year-old Canadian indigenous activist, known for her clean water advocacy. Autumn is an Anishinaabe member of the Wikwemikong First Nation.
When she was 13 she addressed world leaders at the UN on the issue of water protection.
Many indigenous territories in Canada have boil water advisories – public health advice that tells people when their water supply might be contaminated. Water might be safe for washing in. However, drinking this water without boiling it first can cause nausea, cramps, diarrhoea, and headaches, as well as increases in waterborne illnesses like cholera, typhoid fever and dysentery.
The first time Autumn noticed a water warning was when she was eight years old.
In her speech to the UN in 2018 she said: “Where I come from, I’m fortunate that I can still drink the water from the lake, but sometimes I question it. Not far from where I live, there are communities that have lived through boil-water advisories. I ask myself: Why is it this way? Why in my province? Why in my country?”
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Hillary Margolis
Hillary Margolis is a senior researcher in the Women’s Rights Division at Human Rights Watch. Her work focuses on violence against women and girls, including sexual violence in conflict, interpersonal and domestic violence, and protection risks for female migrants, refugees and asylum-seekers. Most recently, she has conducted research on targeting of women’s rights defenders in Poland, women refugees and asylum-seekers in Greece and Italy, and on sexual violence by armed groups in the Central African Republic conflict. Her previous work at Human Rights Watch documented the impact of the Syrian conflict on women and girls, including exploitation and harassment in refugee settings, abuse of women in detention, and risks facing female activists and household heads.
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Bianka Nwolisa
Bianka Nwolisa and her family are now channeling their trauma into activism, participating in local protests in addition to conducting educational workshops through their foundation. The young women who participated in the original #DontCallMeMurzyn video have gone on to upload two more discussions, hoping the campaign will pick up momentum. A 2011 study of African and Asian immigrants to Poland by Marek Nowak and Michał Nowosielski found that “a large portion of racist crimes committed in Poland go unreported.”
