Outspoken

Sima Samar is a doctor for the poor, an educator of the marginalised and a human rights defender. She established and nurtured the Shuhada Organization that operated more than one hundred schools and dozens of hospitals and clinics. Samar served in the Interim Administration of Afghanistan and established the first-ever Ministry of Women’s Affairs. From 2002-2019, she chaired the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, a commitment that has put her own life at great risk. Having served as the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Sudan from 2005 to 2009, she was appointed in 2019 as a member of both the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Internal Displacement and the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Advisory Board on Mediation. She is currently a visiting scholar at Tufts University’s Fletcher School.

Sally Armstrong is an award-winning author, journalist, and human rights activist. She is the author of four bestselling books: Ascent of Women; The Nine Lives of Charlotte Taylor; Veiled Threat; and Bitter Roots, Tender Shoots. Armstrong was the first journalist to bring the story of the women of Afghanistan to the world. She has also covered stories in conflict zones from Bosnia and Somalia to Rwanda, Afghanistan, Iraq, South Sudan, Jordan, and Israel. She is a four-time winner of the Amnesty International Canada media award, the recipient of eleven honorary doctorate degrees, and an Officer of the Order of Canada. In 2019, she delivered the CBC Massey Lectures, Power Shift: The Longest Revolution.