Ginetta Sagan

Ginetta Sagan (June 1, 1925 – August 25, 2000) was an Italian-born American human rights activist best known for her work with Amnesty International on behalf of prisoners of conscience.

Born in Milan, Italy, Sagan lost her parents in her teenage years to the Black Brigades of Benito Mussolini. Like her parents, she was active in the Italian resistance movement, gathering intelligence and supplying Jews in hiding. She was captured and tortured in 1945, but escaped on the eve of her execution with the help of Nazi defectors.

After studying in Paris, she attended graduate school in child development in the US and married Leonard Sagan, a physician. The couple then resettled in Atherton, California, where Sagan founded the first chapter of Amnesty International in the western US. She later toured the region, helping to establish more than 75 chapters, and organized events to raise money for political prisoners.

In 1984, Sagan was elected the honorary chair of Amnesty International USA. US President Bill Clinton awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996, and Italy later awarded her the rank of Grand Ufficiale Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana (Grand Official Order of Merit of the Italian Republic). Amnesty International founded an annual Ginetta Sagan Award for activists in her honor.

Childhood and World War II Ginetta Sagan was born in Milan, Italy, to a Catholic father and Jewish mother. Both of her parents were doctors. Her father was later shot in a staged "attempted escape", and her mother sent to Auschwitz, where she was murdered.

Ginetta, then seventeen years old, was already active in the resistance movement, delivering food coupons and clothing to Jews who were in hiding. Due to her energy and small size (she never grew to more than five feet tall),

In late February 1945, Sagan was betrayed by an informer in the movement and, like her parents, arrested by the Black Brigades. In the three years that followed, Sagan traveled throughout the American West, founding 75 more AI chapters. By 1978, AI USA's membership had increased to 70,000, more than 100 times that of a decade before. An AI spokesman later attributed Sagan with doing more than anyone to establish Amnesty International in the US, adding that "I think she has probably organized more people than anyone else in the human rights movement globally". A colleague remembers fellow anti-war activists being "furious" that Sagan would criticize the new Vietnamese communist regime as strongly as she had criticized the US Armed Forces,

In addition to her work with Amnesty International, Sagan founded the Aurora Foundation, which investigates and publicizes incidents of human rights abuses.

In 1996, US President Bill Clinton awarded Sagan the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor of the US. In the citation, he stated that "Ginetta Sagan's name is synonymous with the fight for human rights around the world. She represents to all the triumph of the human spirit over tyranny." The same year, she was awarded the Grand Ufficiale Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana, Italy's highest honor.

2025: Jazmín Romero Epiayú, Colombia; Pashtana Durrani, Afghanistan/USA 2024: Teresa Njoroge, Kenya; Daniela Ancira Ruiz, Mexico 2023: Juwairiya Mohideen, Sri Lanka; Justyna Wydrzyńska, Poland 2022: Suha Tutunji, Lebanon; Bai Bibyaon Ligkayan Bigkay, Philippines 2021: Norma Andrade, Mexico; Riya Williams Yuyada, South Sudan 2019: Victoria Nyanjura, Uganda; Malika Abubakarova, Russia 2018: Dorothy Njemanze, Nigeria 2017: Charon Asetoyer, Comanche Nation 2016: Julienne Lusenge, Democratic Republic of Congo 2015: Amal Khalifa Habbani, Sudan 2014: Magda Alli and Suzan Fayad, Egypt 2012: Jenni Williams, Zimbabwe 2010: Rebecca Masika Katsuva, Democratic Republic of Congo 2009: Yolanda Becerra Vega, Colombia 2008: Betty Makoni, Zimbabwe 2007: Lydia Cacho Ribeiro, Mexico 2006: Ljiljana Raičević, Serbia and Montenegro 2005: Hawa Aden Mohamed, Somalia 2004: Nebahat Akkoç, Turkey 2003: Sonia Pierre, Dominican Republic 2002: Jeannine Mukanirwa, Democratic Republic of Congo 2000: Helen Akongo, Uganda; Giulia Tamayo Leon, Peru; Hina Jilani, Pakistan 1999: Sima Wali, Afghanistan 1999: Adriana Portillo-Bartow, El Salvador 1998: Beatrice Mukansinga, Rwanda 1997: Mangala Sharma, Bhutan