Wai Wai Nu

Wai Wai Nu (; born 1987) is a Burmese human rights activist. She was listed one of the BBC 100 Women in 2014. In 2017, she was named one of Time magazine's Next Generation Leaders. She is an ethnic Rohingya.

Early life Wai Wai Nu was born in 1987 in Buthidaung, Rakhine State, Myanmar to Rohingya parents. She grew up in Buthidaung. She was in her second year of law school at Yangon East university. Her father had been voted in as a member of Parliament as part of the National League for Democracy (NLD) in the 1990 general election, but the military junta refused to recognize the election as he was the member of an opposition party. It is unclear why U Kyaw Min, Wai Wai Nu's father, was not arrested in 1990 along with the four hundred or so members of the National League for Democracy and the many other democracy activists who were arrested in the aftermath of the 1990 general election. It was only in 2005 (fifteen years after the 1990 election) that Wai Wai Nu and her family were arrested. 2005 was the same year that General Khin Nyunt, Burma's "Evil Prince", was sentenced to 44 years in prison after falling from power. The family did not have any legal representation, and the judge did not take any notes during the trial. Although in some articles it is stated that her parents and siblings, along with Wai Wai Nu, were convicted of breaking the immigration law named a threat to the state, in other interviews her father has stated that he was charged with "sedition". Her sister contracted Hepatitis C and father developed a heart condition due to bad prison conditions. Wai Wai Nu educates women on issues relating to abuse, such as domestic violence and sexual harassment. In 2015, she was named one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy Magazine. Also in 2015, she participated in the inaugural class of a training program for young leaders held at the George W. Bush Presidential Center. The program, called the Liberty and Leadership Forum, was focused on democratic transition training. In 2017, she was named one of the Next Generation Leaders by Time magazine. In 2019, she was selected as an Obama Foundation Scholar at Columbia University. The following year, she was selected as a Genocide Prevention Fellow by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. In 2021, she received the City of Athens Democracy Award from The Democracy & Culture Foundation.