Betty Makoni
Nominated by: Sarah from IDEX
Today Betty Makoni is a well-known -- and tireless -- children's rights advocate in one of the worst places in the world to be a child: Zimbabwe. But 30 years ago she was a vulnerable child herself. At the age of six Makoni was raped -- one of ten young girls violated by a local shop owner. With little family or community support, she committed herself to working -- to earning money for school fees -- and to studying.
Makoni's Girl Child Network has even helped create "safe villages," where girl victims of abuse, child labor, forced marriage, and rape live together in security. Over the past year, Makoni was elected to the Ashoka fellowship, highlighted in the book Women Who Light the Dark, and featured in the documentary "Tapestries of Hope." In March, over 5 million children at 20,000 schools worldwide voted to award Makoni this year's prestigious WorldÂ’s ChildrenÂ’s Prize for the Rights of the Child.
Four years ago Makoni was attacked in her home by masked men who broke her door down with an axe. One of them said: "YouÂ’re the woman that causes nothing but trouble for us," before they were scared off by Makoni's husband. But despite the threats to her life and despite her country's political upheaval and its disastrous economic circumstances, Betty Makoni does not relent in her struggle for girls' empowerment. "Unless we start challenging the systems that are currently in existence and come up with an activist, development organization that supports and helps young girls to develop, there is going to be continuous gender imbalance in our society," she told a San Francisco audience in 2003. Her work continues. Click here to stay up to date with the latest on children and youth issues worldwide, or get the latest on women's issues from OneWorld's "Gender Matters" edition of Perspectives online magazine. You can also subscribe to our RSS feeds on children and youth and gender.  VOTE NOW!
THE OTHER FINALISTS... Vicky Tauli-Corpuz & the world's indigenous rights campaigners
Betty Makoni
Rajendra Pachauri & the scientific community and governments contributing to the IPCC
Justine Masika Bihamba & Eve Ensler
Burma's Monks
Molly Melching & the women of Senegal and West Africa
Vandana Shiva
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