Canadian Lawyer Louise Arbour left her post as a judge of the Supreme Court in Canada just three years into her stint to serve as Chief Prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. Later in her career, she went a step further to become the High Commissioner for Human Rights for the UN.

 

Arbour has been responsible for indicting Slobodan Milosevic for war crimes including genocide committed in Kosovo while he was still president of the Republic of Yugoslavia. More recently, Arbour confronted the Bush administration over the Iraq War, the death penalty, and the war on terror, demonstrating a consistent refusal to be silent in the face of human rights abuses.

 

 

The resident silver fox of human rights law, Geoffrey Robertson plays The Justice Game better than most legal minds of our generation. Amongst his famous (and notorious) clientele have been Salman Rushdie, Johnny Rotten, Malcolm X, and a handful of IRA bombers.

 

Despite the air of glamour and scandal surrounding Robertson’s cases, his record is indisputable evidence of his fight for human rights on an international level. Robertson has served as a UN appeal judge, as President of the War Crimes Court in Sierra Leone, and has acted for the Human Rights and Equality Commission in a landmark case defining the “right to dignity”.  Now, joined by fellow human rights Barrister, Amal Clooney nee Alamuddin, Robertson is working to win the return of the Elgin Marbles to Greece.

 

 

In 1975, Shirin Ebadi became the first female judge in Iran, appointed to the bench of Tehran’s City Court. From there it was a whirlwind ride to founding the Association for Support of Children’s Rights in 1995 and the Human Rights Defence Centre in 2001. Her efforts were rewarded with a Nobel Peace Prize in 2003, making Ebadi the first Muslim woman to receive the honour.

 

Ebadi has campaigned to end legal discrimination against women in Iranian law in and out of the courts. Having initiated the One Million Signatures campaign in Iran (a petition to repeal discriminatory laws), Ebadi now defends 50 women imprisoned for collecting signatures on charges of undermining national security.

 

 

Chinese human rights attorney Gao Zhisheng is a proud dissident in the world’s largest communist state. Though Gao has been recognised by China’s Ministry of Justice as one of the country’s best 10 lawyers, his legal bouts have led to his detainment without charges on a number of occasions, including a number of mysterious disappearances.

 

Gao’s record includes campaigning for religious freedom in China by representing the State-banned religious group Falun Gong. Gao also ran the Open Constitution Initiative out of his own home to advocate the rule of law and greater constitutional protections in the PRC. Until recently Gao was under house arrest in China on a daily diet of a slice of bread and a piece of cabbage, but he is currently being released and moved to the United States for treatment due to his deteriorating health.

 

Syrian human rights lawyer Razan Zaitouneh is the youngest legal expert to make this list. Despite her comparatively short career to date, her already impressive record and campaign for human rights in Syria speaks for itself. After graduating from law school, Zaitouneh wasted no time in diving into Syria’s often dangerous court system by defending political prisoners and co-founding the Human Rights Association in Syria.

 

A prominent voice against the Assad regime and in support of peaceful revolution, Zaitouneh continued her defence of and for human rights in Syria. Late last year, shortly after a phone interview with an American TV journalist, Zaitouneh, her husband, and two fellow activists were kidnapped from their offices. To this day, their whereabouts are still unknown.