Afghan women have led protests throughout the country ever since the Taliban regained power in 2021 and took away many of women’s basic human rights, including the rights to equal education and employment. Though Taliban security forces respond with violence and mass arrests, the protests continue – even following the bombing of the Kaaj Higher Education Center in Kabul by extremists, where over 50 people were killed, most of them girls and women. The unrelenting courage of Afghan women serves as an inspiration to the world.

The original Women’s March took place on January 21, 2017, following the presidential inauguration. Prompted by the new president’s policy positions and rhetoric, the event became a worldwide protest. Women around the globe marched to decry anti-feminist policies and reinforce the fact that women’s rights are human rights. In 2023, Women’s March rallies were held across the US on the 50th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision guaranteeing the right to abortion, which had been overturned in 2022 by the Supreme Court.

Freedom of the press is a human right. Many governments attempt to remove this right. Journalists, even in censored environments, sometimes publish underground, defying autocratic regimes by uncovering the truth. In recent years, investigative reporters from countries with limited civil and political freedoms – including Russia – use social media to reach wide audiences around the globe. On August 1, 2024, Gershkovich was freed in a historic prisoner swap.

Climate change threatens human rights, taking a toll on the livelihoods, security, and nutrition of people everywhere. More than 20 million people demonstrated in support of environmental protection. In the late 1980s, protests began to focus on the lethal issue of global warming. Today, activists around the globe are working to force industrialized countries to commit to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The safety of our world depends on compliance.

The Arab Spring was a series of anti-government protests, uprisings, and armed rebellions that swept across the Middle East in 2011. The protests began in Tunisia when a street vendor set himself on fire in response to being mistreated by corrupt authorities. This sparked a period of unrest, forcing President Ben Ali to step down after a 24-year rule. While protests in each country differed, they all served as a catalyst for change and exposed the myth that people passively accepted their political and economic circumstances. 

Shockwaves were felt around the world on January 6, 2021, as a sacred site of American democracy – the US Capitol Building – was attacked by a mob supporting the lie that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen. Seeking to preserve both justice and democracy, a House committee was established to hold public hearings to investigate this insurrection and the pressuring of former VP Mike Pence to block the certification of Joseph Biden as president.

One way of combatting genocide is through justice. The International Criminal Court (ICC), seated in The Hague, was established in the 1990s to hold to account those guilty of the world’s worst atrocities. Inspired by the International Military Tribunals after WWII, the ICC was tasked with investigating and trying those charged with genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Following trials in the former Yugoslavia (1993) and Rwanda (1994), hundreds of individuals were indicted.

A revolutionary wave of protests beginning in 1989 led to the disintegration of most of the world’s Communist states. In Germany, the Berlin Wall, the symbol of the Iron Curtain, was brought down after mounting pressure from the people. In Poland, the workers’ Solidarity Movement and mass strikes led to increased freedoms. Reaching its peak in 1991, the wave of unrest culminated in the demise of the largest Communist state, the Soviet Union. Political dissidents, literary figures, and religious leaders were a prominent part of its fall.

In 2016, plans were announced to construct the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), bringing crude oil from fields in western North Dakota to southern Illinois. Members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe organized protests along the construction route, claiming that the project violated their sovereignty and posed a threat to the region’s water as well as to their ancient burial grounds. Though the pipeline was eventually built, the Standing Rock community brought its lethal effects to the world’s attention, and the DAPL is now undergoing environmental review. 

The Tigray Region in Africa was besieged by the armies of Ethiopia and Eritrea from 2020 to 2022; these forces still deprive the starving Tigrayan population of food and supplies. The Tigrayan community in Seattle, however, did not sit idly by. On January 26, 2021, Tigrayans and their supporters staged a #StopWarOnTigray demonstration in downtown Seattle and met with local Congress representatives to plead for open routes for aid.