01 May 2026
Shaista Suhrawardy Ikramullah
Shaista Suhrawardy Ikramullah was a seminal figure in the 20th-century landscape of South Asian and international politics. Her life unfolded at the intersection of private transformation and public upheaval. Born into a family shaped by both Islamic tradition and colonial modernity, she moved between seclusion and Western education before emerging as a scholar, writer, politician and diplomat. She played a role in the formation of Pakistan, the conclusion of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Genocide Convention, as well as in the literary exploration of these political events and the cultural changes of the time. Continue reading >>
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02 April 2026
Amalia González Caballero de Castillo Ledón
“Will we women have the strength necessary to do away with the traditional Mexican concept of a democracy without women?” What sounds like an oxymoron today was the very real question women all around the world had to face in the 20th century. Fortunately, the answer to this question posed by Amalia González Caballero de Castillo Ledón would eventually be affirmative – after 24 years of struggle to obtain women’s suffrage. Continue reading >>
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12 November 2024
Hansa Mehta
Imagine if the very first article of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, 1948, referred “all men”, rather than “all human beings”, and asked us all to act in the spirit of “brotherhood”. Thankfully, that is not how it reads, and for this, credit is due to an Indian woman: Hansa Mehta, whose contribution UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres recognized in his speech celebrating 70 years of the UDHR when he said: “without her, we would literally be speaking of Rights of Man rather than Human Rights.” Continue reading >>
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