When you think of the word freedom fighter, the image that comes to mind for many is that of a confident, charismatic, lone man. This is the image I grew up with. At university, my wardrobe proudly boasted both Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi T shirts, and my diary had their words scrawled in quotation marks. At 18 I headed to Cuba as the history that I’d read told me that I’d find my heroes in the military museums there – I didn’t. Back then I hadn’t realised that I could find heroes in the present. At school you’re taught that everything important was done by men, in the past, and that it was often bloody and violent. We didn’t even learn the word Suffragette, and the Northern Ireland peace process was totally off the curriculum. We heard a bit about a woman called Margaret Thatcher, but I decided not to pursue that relationship as, let it be said, I found scant inspiration there. In short, I grew up in a world without women human rights defenders.
Heroic men like King and Gandhi, along with others, have become such an engrained part of global rights culture that they now stand alone as cultural icons, devoid of context. As a group of modern day human rights defenders convened in the Netherlands today for the opening of the Nobel Women’s Initiative’s fifth conference, Defending the Defenders: Building global support for WHRD, it was clear that if we want activists to thrive and continue to inspire, this context is all too important. We need to look beyond the Disney image of a hero, said Ambassador Kees van Barre, as he welcomed the international delegation. Well, obviously. Look around, we all agreed.
A quick glance at the 100 international activists around the room revealed the following:
