People who change the world

Hellen Ulli Corbett

Helen Ulli Corbett, is a Yamitji-Noongar woman from Western Australia. She first encountered racism and sexism whilst growing up and knew she wanted to do something about it.

In the early 1980s, Helen co-founded the Committee to Defend Black Rights, a group of family members of Indigenous people who had died in custody. She collected 100 stories of deaths in police custody from across Australia and helped to campaign for a Royal Commission into Deaths in Custody. The group's campaigning was successful and the Royal Commission was given a record budget of $40 million. It was the first time the Indigenous community had forced the government's hand:

"I think this was instrumental in the Australian Government signing up to the Optional Protocol of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; since then, other groups have been able to use this to secure their own rights".

Helen was later involved in drafting the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

"No matter how different people's historical, social, economic or cultural backgrounds, their rights are universal. That is the most important lesson I've learnt from my activism."

Enyonam Gadagbui

After seeing people reading Amnesty International reports, Enyonam, a women's officer of a student organisation, enquired as to what they were about. A week later, Enyonam attended her first Amnesty International meeting and started learning about the organisation. Since then Enyonam has become a trainee at Togo's AI headquarters, learning about campaign strategies. Through her work in helping to organise the 2010 Youth Forum, Enyonam organised petitions and partipcipants collected 1,768 signatures.

Having access to a computer with internet facilities has really helped with Enyonam's research and activism enabling her to work on a facebook campaign against the death penalty in Ghana.

"I am a new activist, and all these actions have enabled me to learn about Amnesty International's policies and given me experience of practical campaigning. This has changed my life and my views a lot: I have realized that life is really precious, and that people have rights, no matter what their way of life…Five of my friends have joined Amnesty International Togo through my activism and I am proud of that".

Ciarán O'Carroll

Ciarán grew up in a family with an Irish Catholic background in a conservative Protestant town in Scotland. He faced regular verbal and physical abuse at school, instilling in him a passion for justice and human rights.

Ciarán's activism has taken him many places and provided him with many experiences. In 2009, Ciarán joined the peaceful protest at the Copenhagen Climate Change talks but found himself being herded by riot police.

"I was lucky to be pulled out by three riot police just before the others were told by megaphone that they were under arrest. That arbitrary arrest of 200 peaceful protesters made me realize that activism was going to be a lifelong commitment for me."

In 2010, Ciarán volunteered at New Askar refugee camp outside Nablus in Palestine, working with an international team who provided daily activities, including sports, language learning and music, in a safe environment.

"The main challenge of being an activist is your own head: fear of going into the unknown. I even get nervous about asking people to sign petitions on a busy street because someone might disagree and get angry. But it's all worthwhile when you come back with hundreds of signatures."

Iris Tungland Porturas

Iris became a human rights activist when she was 14 after her sister contacted Amnesty International and they started a group for young people in their city. Their group pride themselves on coming up with imaginative campaigns:

"In most of the actions we do something visual. When we were campaigning about violence against women, for example, we made ourselves up to look as if we had black eyes. This created a lot of publicity: people came up to ask us if we were OK, and we collected a lot of signatures."

Iris' group meetings are informal, and the members are all very different. She views her group as 'colourful family, with agreements and disagreements', with new members joining every year. It's not always easy though, as Iris explains:

"Sometimes you wish you could just snap your fingers and fix a problem. It's hard to accept that it isn't that simple; that you are only making a small contribution and, in the end, the problem may not be fixed. But it is always a huge motivator when new people want to join at the start of a new school year."

Kirity Roy

Kirity has been a human rights activist since he was young. He was an active member of the Association for Protection of Democratic Rights in West Bengal, India, fighting against police torture, police firing on innocent masses, and violence and deaths in custody. He led several fact-finding teams on grave violations of human rights uncovering barbaric acts of the police and state administration.

Kirity's cases include a casual jute mill worker who was abducted by state police, tortured in police custody and disappeared. As a result of Kirity's enquiries, criminal proceedings were started against the police.

Another case in 2008, involved more than 6,000 people living in extreme poverty on a municipal dump who faced forced eviction by the administration without any compensation. Kirity fought the administration on the street and in the court room.

"Victims of police abuse are swallowed up by a culture of silence; they fear repercussions if they speak out, and these fears are often well-founded. We have to break that silence to obtain justice for the victims. If the victims speak out then society will be forced to change the system."

Kirity's activism has led to his arrest in 1993, 2005 and in 2010. In 1994, his house was bombed by the police, and my wife and son were threatened. Amnesty International issued a public statement in support of him.

Luis Felipe Degregori

Felipe is a filmmaker who makes documentaries that promote human rights for some of Peru's most marginalized people. He was motivated to become an activist when he made a documentary - Peces de Ciudad (Beached) - about young migrants who travel from the mountains in Peru to the capital city, Lima.

"I lived with these young people for almost a year and was surprised to discover that the most difficult aspect of their lives was not the extreme poverty, but the discrimination they suffered because of their Andean roots, their distinct accent, the colour of their skin and their lack of education."

Felipe continued to work on other projects promoting equal rights, such as films preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS and a documentary about one of the most excluded groups in all of Latin America: transgender women. Felipe's films have provided vulnerable groups the opportunity to campaign and plead for their rights. He has also raised awareness of the grave human rights violations in Peru through documentaries about the civil war that took place between 1980 and 2000.

"Being a member of Amnesty International gives me support, a sense of belonging and makes me proud to be an activist. I feel as though I have a home base, that I am not alone. It gives me a context. It also makes me proud because Amnesty International is prestigious and because I know what it has achieved in the last 50 years."

Kaisa Viitanen, journalist, and Katja Tähjä, photographer

Kaisa a journalist and Katja, a photographer joined together to raise awareness of undocumented people living secretly in Europe - mostly rejected asylum seekers, men with mental illnesses, and mothers with children.

"It opened my eyes. I hadn´t realized before that there are millions of people living secretly in Europe" (Kaisa)

"Oficially, these people don´t exist. They don't just lack money, they also lack rights to housing, education, fair working conditions, safety, freedom of speech." (Katja).

Kaisa and Katja searched for undocumented migrants who were willing to be photographed and interviewed which they didn't find easy. In September 2010, after a year and half of researching and travelling across Europe, Kaisa and Katja's, book, Paperittomat (Paperless People) was published.

Together, they introduced a new word into the Finnish language - paperiton, paperless. With the aim of wanting Finnish people to feel what it's like to live in constant fear of being caught and deported, they also organised an event in Helsinki with performances, discussions, films and art, all on the 'Paperless' theme.

This project has changed my world. Even the streets in my home city look different. I discovered a world that I never knew existed…During this project I learned to see the invisible. (Katja).

Udi Nir

Udi first became an activist at 13, joining the Amnesty International Israel Youth Network at 17, participating in the 2007 Our Rights Our Future summer camp in Ireland which brought together youth activists from Israel and Palestine, Belgium and Ireland.

The following year Udi joined the Shministim - a group of Israeli high school graduates who refuse to enlist in the Israeli army. Because of his conscientious objection, Udi was sent to a military prison for 21 days, and spent another four months in other forms of military detention, becoming one of Amnesty International Denmark's "Life Line" actions.

"We received our mail once a week. Everybody got a letter or two…but I had a huge package of letters of support from all over the world...Knowing that there were people around the world who shared my values and supported my actions was the main thing that kept me going during that time."

After Udi was released from the army and from prison he has worked with young people's involvement in human rights campaigning as Amnesty International Israel National Youth Coordinator.

"My activism has taught me that human rights are about solidarity. The support I received from Amnesty International activists during my time in prison taught me how important it is to support human rights struggles and activists around the world, and how influential this is, no matter how far away they are."