She was born in 1955, in the Karliova district of Bingöl and attended elementary school in the Hazro and Silvan districts in Diyarbakir. She completed her teacher's training that she began at the Mardin Girl's Elementary Teacher's Boarding School at Manisa, where she was sent as part of a ‘Meeting of East and West’ program. After attending Eskisehir Anatolian University, she taught in villages, districts and capital of Diyarbakir for 22 years. She also became a member of the Association of Teachers’ Union of Turkey. In 1996, she converted one room in her home into an office, and in 1997, she founded women’s center KAMER. She draw attention to the way gender roles relegate women to second-class status. She conducted projects to raise awareness among women, who are citizens, wives and mothers. Helping more than one hundred women receive protection, she prevented likely killings. She developed and implemented programs to support women in their bid to enter commercial life as entrepreneurs. The program titled “An Opportunity for Every Woman,” helps women to become aware of the violence they experienced and overcome their unequal status through empowerment and economic independence. She conducts projects to promote non-violence, struggle against discrimination and encourage participation in early childhood period. She works on integration and access to equal rights of women and children who sought refuge in Turkey as a result of the War in Syria.

She was born in 1960 in Shillong, the capital of India’s Meghalaya state, where she studied political science, history and education at St. Mary’s College. Although she avoided politics, she did work for increased transparency of the public institutions in her region, and for improvement in the area of human rights. After the 2005 enactment of the Freedom of Information Law, which provided citizens with the right to demand information from official institutions, and in the face of a bureaucratic system empowered by legal impunity, she worked assiduously as an activist for the freedom to acquire information. The turning point in her defence of rights came in 2018, with the revelation of ongoing mining corruption in the Janita hills. She conducted studies of the illegal mining activity in the region, which had led to many people losing their land and their lives. She learned that they had dug pits that resembled rat holes and had children small enough to fit working in these holes. Polluting the environment and causing animal deaths as well, these practices were outlawed, but the unlicensed mining in the region had not stopped. In fact, state authorities had cooperated for years with a coal mafia consisting of coal mine owners and financiers. While taking photographs of the excavation trucks hauling coal illegally, she was attacked by a 30-40 member gang from the mafia and spent a month in intensive care. Following the attack, she stated that she would not retreat, and that the attack in fact strengthened her conviction that she was doing the right thing. She announced the plaintiffs in the mining truck case were arrested by the police but later released after pressure from the coal mafia. She suffered the censure of the local people, who feared that stopping the mining would leave them without a living. Despite this, she still works against illegal mining to protect the rights of the poor, child labourers and the environment.

He was born in Konya in 1974. He studied economics and history at Bogaziçi University. He also completed his PhD in the same university in the Institute of Ataturk’s Principles and Reforms in the field of Modern Turkish History. He was interested in cinema, theater and literature since his secondary and high school years. While studying at Bogaziçi University he attended the activities of the theater club. In the club, with his friends, he organized events in which movies were discussed and he invited prominent directors from the movie sector in Turkey. During his university years, he started writing draft scenarios and with his friends they published the ‘Görüntü’ journal. His first feature, Beyond the Hill (2012), received numerous awards, including the Caligari Film Prize from the Berlin International Film Festival; Best Film Award in Istanbul Film Festival. He continues to write in the field of cinema and political science in many journals and teaches in the Humanities and Social Sciences Department at Istanbul Technical University.

He was born in Ankara in 1963. He graduated from Istanbul High School and Ankara University Faculty of Political Sciences. Between 1984-88, he worked as a journalist in the weekly news magazine Yeni Gündem. Since 1988, he has been the editor of research-analysis series in Iletisim Publishing. From 1993 to 2014, he was the editor of the quarterly social sciences magazine ‘Toplum ve Bilim’ (Society and Science). He has been the editor of chief of the monthly published socialist cultural magazine ‘Birikim’ since 2012, which he has been writing regularly since 1989. He translated more than twenty books, including works by Karl Karx, Jürgen Habermas, Franz Kafka, Ernst Bloch, Wilhelm Schmid. As a member of the board of founders of Human Rights Foundation of Turkey, he is taking part in the organization of the annual conference on "Turkey Human Rights Movement Conference" since fifteen years. He has been working as the general secretary at the Board of Directors of the History Foundation since 2017.

He was born in 1971 in Colombia. He holds a Ph.D. and an M.S. in Sociology degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an M.A. degree from New York University’s Institute for Law and Society, an M.A. degree in Philosophy from the National University of Colombia, and a J.D. from Universidad de los Andes. He is the founder of the Program on Global Justice and Human Rights and former Director of the Center for Socio-Legal Research at the University of the Andes. He is co-founder and former Executive Director of the Center for Law, Justice and Society (Dejusticia). He has been a visiting professor at New York University, Stanford University, Brown University, University of Melbourne, the European University Institute, the University of Pretoria (South Africa), the Getulio Vargas Foundation (Brazil) and Central European University.

He was born in 1953 in Marseille. He is a film director and a scriptwriter whose films are strongly marked by the local and regional environment of the city of Marseille. He has been in the film industry since 1980. He studied at the Social Sciences Department of Paris University. His films were shown at many festivals. Marius and Jeannette won the Certain Regard Prize at Cannes IFF, the Delluc, Lumiere Prizes, the Grand Prix of IFF in Geneve, Figueira da Foz (Portugal), Hayfa (Israel), and Ariane Ascaride received Cesar for Best Actress. In 2006, Robert Guédiguian won Silver Apricot in Armenia in Golden Apricot Festival.

She received her law degree from the University of Buenos Aires, has a master's degree in Latin American studies from Stanford University, and a master's degree in law from Harvard University. She is the Executive Director of the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL), a civil society organization that works throughout the America to promote human rights through the use of international law and the Inter-American System for the Protection of Human Rights. In this capacity, she has litigated numerous leading cases on behalf of victims of human rights violations before both the Inter-American Commission and Court of Human Rights. She has helped shape international human rights standards in key areas through her litigation, advocacy, and writing. Since 2015, she is also a founder and member of the Gqual Campaign, an initiative to promote gender parity in international representation. Additionally, together with other regional and international experts, she is currently developing a protocol on investigating threats against human rights defenders.

She was born in 1949 in the United States. She is the Founder and Creative Director of Tostan NGO, headquartered in Dakar, Senegal that aims at empowering African communities to bring about sustainable development and positive social transformation based on respect of human rights. Having lived and worked in Senegal since 1974, she has received international recognition for her groundbreaking educational programs in national languages. Molly’s early experiences in rural Senegal reinforced her beliefs that many development efforts were not addressing the deeper priorities of African communities. In collaboration with Senegalese villagers, she developed a new type of education program for promoting African values and using traditional ways of learning for adults and children. Their efforts grew throughout the 1980s, heading to the establishment of Tostan in 1991. Tostan’s innovative grassroots, human rights-based education model has led communities to make significant progress in the areas of health, education, governance, environment and financial empowerment. To date, more than 8,500 communities in 8 African countries have held public declarations to abandon the practices of female genital cutting and child marriage.

She was born in Ankara in 1976. She graduated from the Department of International Relations at Westminster University, London. She completed her master's degree in London School of Economics. When she was in Zurich to study art at the University of Geneva, due to an accident she had while she was trying to help her friend in wheelchair to get on train, she lost her left arm and leg. She worked as a translator, independent journalist and documentary filmmaker.

In 2003, Pavey worked for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Between 2003 and 2010 she worked on humanitarian missions in countries such as Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Hungary. Between 2010 and 2011 she worked as the Secretary to the CRPD Secretariat at the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Between 2011 and 2017, she served as a deputy in the Republican People's Party. She is the first disabled woman ever elected to the parliament of Turkey and she is a member of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

She currently carries out global actvities and reconciliation between parliamentary diplomacy, local governments, and faith and opinion leaders.

She was born in Ankara in 1955. She completed her undergraduate education at Ankara University, Faculty of Political Science. In 1980-81, she attended the graduate program at Johns Hopkins University in Bologna, Italy. In 1982, she became a research assistant at Istanbul University Faculty of Economics. She received her doctorate from AÜSBF in 1987. She worked as a lecturer at Istanbul, Marmara and Galatasaray Universities between 1982 and 2017. Her researches on nationalism, identity and citizenship issues are published in academic journals.

Rakel Dink became involved in human rights activism following the tragic assassination of her husband, the prominent Turkish-Armenian journalist and founder of Agos newspaper, Hrant Dink.

Born to an Armenian family in Silopi, southeastern Turkey, Rakel moved to Istanbul with tens of kids from Anatolia in order to receive education in Armenian Schools. She met with Hrant Dink at Camp Armen, where Armenian children orphans or those away from their families would spend their summers. Rakel and Hrant got married and became managers at Camp Armen in the following years until the property was seized by the state.

Following the death of Hrant Dink in January 2007, Rakel devoted her life to preserving her husband’s legacy. She established the Hrant Dink Foundation in 2007, with a mission to protect and uphold human rights in Turkey, preserve the identity and culture of minorities, address polarization, and normalize Turkish-Armenian relations. Rakel continues to be an optimist and maintains that despite the various challenges that she was forced to overcome throughout her life, she has been surrounded by love and kindness. She is hopeful for the future of Turkey and finds joy in her work and her family.