Righting Wrongs: 20 Human Rights Heroes Around the World

2022 INDIES Winner Silver, Juvenile Nonfiction (Children's)

Many young people aren’t aware that determined individuals created the rights we now take for granted.

The idea of human rights is relatively recent, coming out of a post–World War II effort to draw nations together and prevent or lessen suffering. Righting Wrongs introduces children to the true stories of 20 real people who invented and fought for these ideas. Without them, many of the rights we take for granted would not exist.

These heroes have promoted women’s, disabled, and civil rights; action on climate change; and the rights of refugees. These advocates are American, Sierra Leonean, Norwegian, and Argentinian. Eleven are women. Two identified as queer. Twelve are people of color. One campaigned for rights as a disabled person. Two identify as Indigenous. Two are Muslim and two are Hindu, and others range from atheist to devout Christian. There are two journalists, one general, three lawyers, one Episcopal priest, one torture victim, and one Holocaust survivor.

Their stories of hope and hard work show how people working together can change the world for the better.

Robin Kirk is a human rights educator, advocate, and children’s author. She is a faculty codirector of the Duke Human Rights Center at the Franklin Humanities Institute, a founding member of the Pauli Murray Project, and served as a senior human rights researcher for Human Rights Watch. Her fiction and other writing includes The Bond sci-fi trilogy. Her award-winning short stories and essays have been featured in a variety of anthologies and magazines, and she has written articles for major media outlets including the New York Times, Mother Jones, the Washington Post, and Sojourners.