An Iranian woman not wearing a mandatory headscarf walks past a group of young women who cover their hair in November 2023.
Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Iranian women are still pressing for women’s rights and equality, just in quieter forms, including not wearing mandatory hair covers. Imprisoned activists are also leaking messages to others.
Cuban President Fidel Castro watches former U.S. President Jimmy Carter throw a baseball on May 14, 2002, in Havana, Cuba.
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Beloved in his hometown of Plains, Georgia, Jimmy Carter became the 39th US president and used his office to make human rights a priority throughout the world.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee is set to announce its annual winner for the peace prize on Friday, Oct. 6, 2023.
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The Nobel Peace Prize has recognized some legendary leaders and peace activists, but it has a mixed track record of recognizing people who actually deserve the prize.
In this 1979 photo, Mother Teresa receives the Nobel Peace Prize during a ceremony at Oslo University. At right is the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, John Sanness. In subsequent years, Mother Teresa has faced criticisms.
(Henrik Laurivik/NTB via AP, File)
Peace can become political when advocates oppose or try to reform governments and societies pursuing hostile foreign relations — or when these societies perpetuate injustice and oppression at home.
A Yazidi refugee woman’s upper body is tattooed with the names of her missing family members and fiancé.
(Leah Hennel)
A co-laureate of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, the founder of the human rights centre Viasna is the fourth person in the history of the Nobel to receive this award while in prison.
Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh praying during a three-day requiem for the souls of Vietnam War victims in 2007.
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Thich Nhat Hanh’s teachings, which earned him a global following, gave simple instructions on mindfulness and emphasized how it could be practiced anytime, even when doing routine chores.
Martin Luther King Jr. waves with his children, Yolanda and Martin Luther III, from the 1964 World’s Fair in New York City.
Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images
In his brief life, Martin Luther King Jr. had a variety of interests that informed his work as leader of the civil rights movement. His alma mater has collected some objects that tell his story.
Imprisoned: ousted Myanmar leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.
Dan Kitwood/ PA Images/Alamy Stock Photo
The lives of Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov will be forever changed after winning the prize. But with a more visible presence comes increased scrutiny and threats from those in positions of power.
Muratov’s Nobel will be a boon to Russian investigative journalism.
A worker carries a water container at a newly installed internally displaced person camp in Mekele, the capital of Tigray region, Ethiopia.
Photo by Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP via Getty Images
Africa needs to embrace a new approach that focuses on what countries in an embattled region – as a ‘community’ of regional states – can do to intervene.
US President Ronald Reagan meeting with Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov in the Oval Office in 1988.
White House Photographic Collection/Wikimedia Commons
Andrei Sakharov was one of the most brilliant scientists of the nuclear age. But he is best remembered today as one of the most fearless defenders of human rights around the world.
Villagers collect World Food Programme aid dropped from a plane Feb. 6 in South Sudan.
Tony Karumba/AFP via Getty Images
Over 820 million people around the world go to bed hungry at night, and that tide is rising. For working to reverse it, the U.N. World Food Program has received the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize.
Food aid from the World Food Programme arriving in Juba, South Sudan in 2011.
Khaled Elfiqi/EPA
Desmond Tutu is by far the most high-profile African, if not global, religious leader to support lesbian and gay rights, and he has done so since the 1970s.
A picture of Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed at the Nobel Peace Centre in Oslo, Norway.
Stian Lysberg Solum/EPA
The prime minister may have won the Nobel Peace Prize but he has failed to quell the violence in his own backyard
President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama board Air Force One en route to Oslo, Norway, to accept the Nobel Peace Prize in December 2009.
AP Photo/Susan Walsh
A critic of Obama’s two terms explains how the 44th president’s personality and his politics of ‘least resistance’ prevented him from rising to the moment.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.
Alexandros Michailidis/Shutterstock
Abiy Ahmed was awarded the prize for efforts to achieve peace and international cooperation, and in particular his decisive initiative to resolve the border conflict with neighbouring Eritrea.