Behnaz Monfared

Behnaz Monfared is an Iranian designer and activist.

She volunteered in Peace Museum Teheran, in the International Network for Museum for Peace and works in the website Postcards for Peace. In her words: “…Being a peaceful person wasn’t my choice, it was about finding a new identity, so I try to find peace in every second of my life. As a designer, to reach this passion I have worked on many forms of peace art […]. After all my researches on war, having exhibitions and designing peace postcards, I’ve come to understand that the peace I was looking for is indeed inside me. Finding inner peace is similar to building myself a new world, and to cherish this opportunity, I took it upon myself to share my passion through my art.

If you want to know her personally, come to Blutgasse 3 from Monday November 14th to Sunday November 20th.

Denis Skipin

Russia’s St Petersburg University students cheer for professor who was jailed for anti-war protests

With the Russian invasion of Ukraine crossing eight months, lives in the war-torn country have been shattered. While leaders from different parts of the world are constantly urging Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war, heart-rending comments made by a Russian TV presenter to drown Ukrainian children have been widely condemned.

Meanwhile, turning away from war-mongering, Denis Skopin, an Associate Professor at Russia’s oldest university in St Petersburg, took part in anti-war protests. The professor who was fired by the University, received a round of applause from his students as he bid adieu on his last day at the university.

Wangari Maathai

Wangari Muta Maathai, the so-called woman of trees, was the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004.

Ms. Maathai frequently expressed concern about poverty in Africa. In an exclusive interview with Africa Renewal shortly after winning the Nobel Prize, she maintained that Africans “cannot afford to have a region where a few people are filthy rich and a huge number of people are in dehumanizing poverty.” She was the first African female to win a Nobel Peace Prize and the first woman in East Africa to earn a doctorate in veterinary anatomy, which she obtained from the University of Nairobi. She studied in Kenya, the US and Germany.

Ms. Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977 to plant trees across Kenya, alleviate poverty and end conflict. She was driven by a perceived connection between environmental degradation and poverty and conflict. “Poor people will cut the last tree to cook the last meal,” she once said. “The more you degrade the environment, the more you dig deeper into poverty.”
​ She died at the age of 71 in 2011, of ovarian cancer.

Nika Shakarami

Nika was just 17 years old when she was killed for joining a protest against the murder of Mahsa Amini, burning her hijab. She disappeared on September the 20th, after 10 long days her corp was found.

She was massacred by the police and buried 40 km away from her home, against her parent's will.

Peace Museum Vienna supports the protests in Iran and strongly condemns the repression and the perpetuated violence against women and the protesters.

Mattia Vegni and Valerio Bellini

Mattia Vegni and Valerio Bellini are a couple willing to educate the community to inclusivity. In order to reach this aim during the lockdown they created “The colouring Drag” an illustration book with some of the most famous drag queen in Italy, in order to educate children to diversity and non-binary gender. Moreover, they enetered Arcigay Firenze, the local LGBTQIA+ network to join some activities. One of the most recent activity of Mattia and his husband Valerio was The Shade, a queer show which tries to unite entertainment with some cultural discussion, in order to normalize this non-binary identities within the Italian society.

Giorgio Brizio

Is a FFF activist and passionate about climate change and migration. One off the main figure of FFF Italy, Giorgio wrote articles for several newspapers such as Repubblica, Il Fatto Quotidiano, Corriere della Sera and Domani, plus he published a book –Non siamo tutti sulla stessa barca (we aren’t on the same boat) -writing about the climate crisis in Italy and in the world from the point of view of a young man. Nowadays he advocates for green jobs and green transition while studying international relation in Turin

Lorenzo Tecleme

Lorenzo Tecleme is a member of Fridays for Future and a climate activist. He started his dedication towards the climate cause when he was 17, joining the protests of Fridays for Future in Sassari, his home town. He then kept on being part of the movement getting to know other climate activists in Italy such as Giovanni Mori. He wrote some articles as a freelance in national newspapers such as Repubblica, Jacobin Italia, Domani and several others to talk about climate change and politics. He also hosted a podcast – l’Inviato- where he talked about foreign politics by interviewing different journalists. Nowadays he is still raising awareness about the climate situation on a national and global level, but he also is very active on the regional level: discussing several environmental policies applied by the Sardinian region.

Fabrizio de André

Fabrizio de André was an idealist anarchic singer. He used his texts and his songs to tell stories of the poorest and the most emarginated people in Italian society. He believed war destroys not just lives, but also in values that shape a culture and destroy the relationship among the people. In one of his most famous songs (see under) he talks about the controversial position of soldiers in war or the unfair position of law towards the weakest who are unable to change or influence it. The political view of this author pushed him to critically and ironically analyse the Italian society and makes his poems one of the most known by Italian of all generations.

Espérance Hakuzwimana Ripanti

Espérance Hakuzwimana Ripanti is a Black Lives Matter activist and a writer. She is part of the movement “Razzismo brutta storia” where she works with children, kids, schools, libraries and jails to deconstruct racism stereotypes among the population. She also published a book talking about her story and her call to activism called “Manifesto di una donna nera italiana” (manifest of a black Italian woman) and write for some national newspapers.

Victoria Oluboyo

Victoria Oluboyo is part of the Black Lives Matter movement in Italy and a human right activist who tackles mainly themes about racism and gender. Victoria was Administrative Assistant at the Prefecture of Parma Immigration Office in Parma, Italy. She also served in the Civil Service and was Legal Operator and Research Analyst in Parma, Italy while studying Law at the University. In 2020 she opened a blog called Open, where she talks about feminism, migration policy and actuality, but she also organized several protests and events against racism and discriminations. In 2022 she became the first African city councellor in Italy in her home town Parma.

Paolo Borsellino

Second hand of Falcone, also Borsellino chased after the Mafia leader Riina and tried to fight the violence spread in Sicily due to the internal terrorism. His passion and his aim to combat through legal way the bloodshed of Riina in Sicily costed as well his life in 1994. Today the power of Mafia is not as much as it was in the 90s and part of this result was related to those two admirable judges.

Giovanni Falcone

Giovanni Falcone contributed to shaping the story of crime in Italy. Together with Borsellino he tried to combat COSA Nostra or the mafia in Sicily with some financial investigation. By doing this, this judge succeeded in limiting the power of the leader of the Sicilian Mafia Toto Riina and showed the interconnection between corruption and broad violence. The attempt of fighting the power of Riina costed him his life, but permitted him to establish the biggest and the greatest process against the mafia within the Italian history.

Cecilia Strada

The only daughter of Gino Strada is one of the most notorious human rights activists in Italy and won the Italian Price for Culture of Peace in 2018. She also dedicated her life to rescuing people. First running Emergency, then joining an NGO which saved the lives of tons of migrants trying to pass through the Mediterranean Sea. Her strong voice still asks for justice and improvements of the living conditions of the migrants in Italy.

Manuela Dviri

Manuela Dviri is an Italo-Israeli activist and journalist, nominated by the popular newspaper Yediot Aharonot as one of the 50 women that shaped the most Israeli history. After the death of her son, soldier in the Israeli army, she started her campaign of complaints toward the Netanyahu government and started mobilizing herself for peace, asking the Israeli government to retreat from Lebanon, which happened one year later. Her devotion towards peace has never fainted and after the war in Lebanon and the start of the Intifada, she started creating even more collaborations with Palestinian especially. The most relevant success of her peace dialogues is “Saving Children”: a project that tries to heal and cure sick Palestinian children that cannot be cured and treated in Israeli hospitals. The project included Israeli and Palestinian doctors together and is financed by the Italian government as well.

Marco Pannella

A strong believer in the connection between democracy and nonviolence, he fought in favour of some radical civil and political reforms to improve civil rights in Italy. One of his main conquest was the right to divorce and abortion. Abroad, he engaged with the defence of civil rights in the Eastern European countries, and was therefore arrested in Sophia in 1968. But the passion towards human rights made him pursue one of his many hunger strike to pursue a moratorium on death penalty, improvement of the unbarable conditions of prisoners within the Italian jails.

Emma Bonino

Emma Bonino is an Italian politician and activist. Throughout her life she taught people of different generations the value of peace and freedom. She advocated for referenda and civil rights in the East European Countries and worked for the creation of the International Penalty Courts. In 1981 she promoted an appeal against the genocide through hunger and founded the organization 'Food and Disarmament International' to coordinate activities and international initiatives regarding peace and poverty. She also promoted with a political campaign the institution of an International Penalty Court for the former Yugoslavia.

Rula Jebreal

Rula Jebreal is an Italo-Israelian journalist and notorious human rights activist. She mainly covered news about foreign politics, especially about the Israel-Palestine conflict, but she also is a strong feminist who advocates for the rights of refugees and women within Italian society. She believes that powerful and notorious women have the duty of easing the path of other women towards positions of power. Taking inspiration from her personal history, Rula Jebreal is an example of self-redemption and a modern feminist able to inspire us and look at our actions to improve the world we live in

Peppino Impastato

Peppino Impastato was an Italian journalist and activist known for his fight against the Mafia. His family was part of an important clan running a portion of the drug traffic in Sicily, but instead of joining the organisation of his own family, he rebelled against it. He left home and started to get interested in politics, then he founded a political youth organisation called “Musica e Cultura” (Music and culture). In 1977 he founded Radio Aut, a free radio channel autofinanced and which became very popular in the surroundings thanks to the rubric “Onda Pazza” where Peppino would ironically tease the leaders of the Mafia family and politicians. His political opinion and the rebellion against his own family brought him to become one of the most important Mafia activists in the 70s, but caused his death in 1978. But the injustice towards this activist didn’t stop with his death, the sender of his death will be brought to justice only in 2000, once the case of Peppino Impastato was reopened.