Josephine Odumakin, Nigerian Women's Rights Activist

Josephine "Joe" Obiajulu Okei-Odumakin is a Nigerian women's rights activist. She is the president of the rights groups Women Arise for Change Initiative and the Campaign for Democracy. 

Odumakin was born in Zaria, Kaduna, on July 4, 1966.  She grew up in a Roman Catholic household. She received a bachelor's degree in English Education in 1987, followed by a master's in Guidance and Counseling and a doctorate in History and Policy of Education from the University of Ilorin.  She has frequently been arrested for her activism, especially during the military rule of Ibrahim Babangida, and she met her future husband, Yinak Odumakin, while in prison.

In 2013, Odumakin was presented an International Women of Courage Award from the United States Department of State. 

Samira Ibrahim, Egyptian activist

Samira Ibrahim (Arabic: سميرة إبراهيم‎) (born c. 1987) is an Egyptian activist who came to prominence during the Egyptian revolution .

On March 9, 2011, she participated in a sit-in at Tahrir Square in Cairo. The military violently dispersed protest participants, and Samira and other women were beaten, given electric shocks, strip searched, and videotaped by the soldiers. They were also subjected to virginity tests. The tests were allegedly carried out to protect the soldiers from claims of rape.

After succeeding in placing the case in front of a civilian court, a court order was issued in December 2011 to stop the practice of “virginity tests”. However in March 2012, a military court exonerated Dr. Adel El Mogy from charges laid in connection with the virginity testing of Ibrahim.

Ibrahim vowed to take her case to the international courts.

In early March 2013, Ibrahim came under criticism after Samuel Tadros, writing in The Weekly Standard, accused her of posting anti-Semitic and anti-American statements on her Twitter account. These statements included quoting Adolf Hitler, writing: "I have discovered with the passage of days, that no act contrary to morality, no crime against society, takes place, except with the Jews having a hand in it. Hitler.” In reaction to a suicide bombing of a bus of Israelis in Bulgaria, she wrote "Today is a very sweet day with a lot of very sweet news.” In 2012, on the anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, she tweeted "Today is the anniversary of 9/11. May every year come with America burning".

The United States State Department subsequently announced that it would not be giving the International Women of Courage Award to Samira Ibrahim in light of these comments.

Initially, Ibrahim claimed that her Twitter account had been "previously stolen" and that "any tweet on racism and hatred is not me”. However, she later stated "I refuse to apologize to the Zionist lobby in America regarding my previous anti-Zionist statements under pressure from American government therefore they withdrew the award." The United States State Department later stated that Ibrahim had since left the United States to return to Egypt.

On March 8, 2013, a spokeswoman for the United States State Department stated that "Upon further review, the department has decided not to present her with the award" as American officials "didn't consider some of the public statements that she had made appropriate. They didn't comport with our values" while adding that "There were obviously some problems in our review process, and we're going to do some forensics on how that happened."

Beatrice Mtetwa, Human Rights Lawyer

Beatrice Mtetwa is a Zimbabwean lawyer who has been internationally recognized for her defense of journalists and press freedom.  The New York Times described her in 2008 as "Zimbabwe's top human rights lawyer".

Mtetwa received her LLB from the University of Botswana and Swaziland in 1981 and spent the next two years working as a prosecuting attorney in Swaziland. In 1983, she moved to Zimbabwe, where she continued working as a prosecutor until 1989. That year, she went into private practice, and soon began specializing in human rights law. In one of her more notable cases, she successfully challenged a section of Zimbabwe's Private Voluntary Organizations Act which allowed a government minister the authority to dissolve or replace the board members of non-governmental organizations. She also challenged the results of 37 districts in the 2000 parliamentary elections. In a PBS documentary, Mtetwa described her motives for her activism as "not because there is any glory or cash to it and not because I'm trying to antagonize the government... I'm doing it because it's a job that's got to be done".

Mtetwa is particularly noted for her defense of arrested journalists, both local and international. In 2003, for example, she won a court order preventing the deportation of Guardian reporter Andrew Meldrum, presenting it to security officials at Harare International Airport only minutes before Meldrum's plane was scheduled to depart. She also won acquittals for detained reporters Toby Hamden and Julian Simmonds from London's Sunday Telegraph, who had been arrested during coverage of the April parliamentary election on charges of working without government accreditation. In April 2008, she secured the release of New York Times reporter Barry Bearak, who had been imprisoned on similar charges. She also defended many local journalists arrested in the run-up to the 2008 presidential election.

In 2003, Mtetwa was arrested on allegations of drunk driving.  At the police station, she was reportedly beaten and choked before being released three hours later without a formal charge. Though unable to speak for two days after the attack, she returned on the third day with a folder of medical evidence in order to file charges against the police officers who assaulted her. Police officers reportedly attacked Mtetwa again in 2007, beating her and three colleagues with rubber truncheons during a march protesting harassment of Zimbabwe's lawyers.

In an interview with the Committee to Protect Journalists, Mtetwa described her procedure for averting potential attacks:

"I think I confront the danger immediately before it happens. I always make sure that if, for instance, I'm called in the middle of the night to a scene that is potentially dangerous, I make sure that there are as many media practitioners as possible, particularly to record what will happen there. And in the glare of cameras I find that people don't want to do what they would want to do. So in a lot of ways I think I've been lucky, and I haven't received as much harassment as one would have expected, or as much as other human rights defenders have had."

In 2005, she won the Interantional Press Freedom Award of the Committed to Protect Journalists.  The award citation stated that "in a country where the law is used as a weapon against independent journalists, Mtetwa has defended journalists and argued for press freedom, all at great personal risk."  She also won the group's Burton Benjamin Memorial Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2008.

Mtetwa was also received several awards from legal organizations. In 2009, the European Bar Human Rights Institute awarded her the Ludovic-Trarieux International Human Rights Prize ("The award given by lawyers to a lawyer"), reserved each year to a lawyer who throughout his or her career has illustrated, by activity or suffering, the defense of human rights in the world.  Mtetwa also won the 2010 International Human Rights award of the American Bar Association.  In 2011, she was awarded the Inamori Ethics Prize by Case Western Reserve University in the United States.  And, most recently (2014), she was named a recipient of the International Women of Courage Award that is annually given out by the United States Department of State to women around the world who have shown leadership, courage, resourcefulness and willingness to sacrifice for others, especially for better promotion of  women's rights.  

Lupita Nyong'o, "12 Years a Slave" Actress

Lupita Amondi Nyong'o (born March 1, 1983) is an actress and music video director of dual Kenyan and Mexican citizenship. She made her feature film debut in Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave (2013) as Patsey, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, among numerous other awards and nominations. She is one of the few actors who has won an Academy Award for their debut performance in a feature film.

Nyong'o was born in Mexico City, Mexico, to Dorothy and Peter Anyang' Nyong'o, a politician in Kenya. It is a Luo tradition to name a child after the events of the day, so her parents named her Lupita (a diminutive of "Guadalupe" Our Lady of Guadalupe). She is of completely Luo descent on both sides of her family, and is the second of six children. Her father was the former Kenyan Minister for Medical Services. At the time of Lupita's birth, he was a visiting lecturer in political science at El Colegio de Mexico in Mexico City, and her family had been living in Mexico for three years.
Nyong'o moved back to Kenya with her parents when she was less than one year old, when her father was appointed a professor at the University of Nairobi. She grew up primarily in Kenya, and describes her upbringing as "middle class, suburban". At age sixteen, her parents sent her back to Mexico for seven months to learn Spanish. During those seven months, Nyong'o lived in Taxco, Mexico, and took classes at Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico's Learning Center for Foreigners.

In 2013, her father was elected to represent Kisumu County in the Kenyan Senate. Nyong'o's mother was the managing director of the Africa Cancer Foundation and owned her own communications company.  In 2012, her older cousin, Isis Nyong'o, was named one of Africa's most powerful women by Forbes magazine. Her uncle, Aggrey Nyong'o, a prominent Kenyan physician, was killed in a road accident in 2002.

She was fluent in her native Luo, English, Swahili and Spanish. On February 27, 2014, at the Essence Black Women In Hollywood luncheon in Beverly Hills, Lupita gave a speech on black beauty. Lupita talked about a letter she received from a young fan who stated she was unhappy with herself until she saw the actress on the cover of a magazine. In her speech, Lupita talked about the insecurities she had about herself as a teenager; growing up as a dark skinned black girl, women that looked like her were barely portrayed in the media and when they were, they were not deemed as being beautiful. She said her views about herself changed when she saw South Sudanese supermodel Alek Wek become successful.

Nyong'o grew up in an artistic family, where family get-togethers often included performances by the children in the family and trips to see plays. She attended an all-girls school in Kenya and acted in school plays, with a minor role in Oliver Twist being her first play. At age 14, Nyong'o made her professional acting debut as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet in a production by the Nairobi, Kenya-based repertory company Phoenix Players. While a member of the Phoenix Players, Nyong'o also performed in the plays "On The Razzle" and "There Goes The Bride". Nyong'o cites the performances of Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey in The Color Purple with inspiring her to pursue a professional acting career.

Nyong'o attended college in the United States. After graduating from Hampshire College with a degree in film and theatre studies, she worked on the production crew of many films, including Fernando Meirelles's The Constant Gardener, with Ralph Fiennes, Mira Nair's The Namesake, and Salvatore Stabile's Where God Left His Shoes. She cites Fiennes as another individual who inspired her to pursue a professional acting career.

She starred in the 2008 short film East River, directed by Marc Grey and shot in Brooklyn, New York. She returned to Kenya in 2008 and starred in the Kenyan television series Shuga, an MTV Base Africa/UNICEF drama about HIV/AIDS prevention. In 2009, she wrote, directed, and produced the documentary In My Genes, about the treatment of Kenya's albino population, which played at several film festivals and won first prize at the 2008 Five College Film Festival. Nyong'o also directed the The Little Things You Do music video by Wahu featuring Bobi Wine, which was nominated for the Best Video Award at the MTV Africa Music Awards 2009.

Nyong'o subsequently enrolled in the acting program at the Yale School of Drama. At Yale she appeared in many stage productions, including Gertrude Stein's Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights, Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, and Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew and The Winter's Tale. While at Yale, she was the recipient of the Herschel Williams Prize "awarded to acting students with outstanding ability" during the 2011–2012 school year.

Nyong'o landed her breakout role when she was cast in 12 Years a Slave immediately before graduating from Yale with an MFA in 2012. The film was released in 2013 to great critical acclaim. Nyong'o received rave reviews for her performance, and was nominated for several awards including a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress and two Screen Actors Guild Awards including Best Supporting Actress, which she won. She also co-starred in Liam Neeson's 2014 film Non-Stop.

On March 2, 2014, she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, becoming the sixth black actress to win the award.

In 2014, she was chosen as one of the faces for Miu Miu's Spring 2014 campaign, with Elizabeth Olsen, Elle Fanning and Bella Heathcote. She also appeared on the covers of several magazines, including New York's Spring 2014 fashion issue and UK magazine Dazed & Confused. She was also a regular on Harper's Bazaar's Derek Blasberg's Best Dressed List.