Aminatou Haidar
Aminatou Ali Ahmed Haidar (; born 24 July 1966), sometimes known as Aminetou, Aminatu or Aminetu, is a Sahrawi human rights activist and an advocate of the independence of Western Sahara. She is often called the "Sahrawi Gandhi" or "Sahrawi Pasionaria" for her nonviolent protests. She is the president of the Collective of Sahrawi Human Rights Defenders (CODESA). She was imprisoned from 1987 to 1991 and from 2005 to 2006 on charges related to her independence advocacy. In 2009, she attracted international attention when she staged a hunger strike in Lanzarote Airport after being denied re-entry into Moroccan Western Sahara. Haidar has won several international human rights awards for her work, including the 2008 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, 2009 Civil Courage Prize and 2019 Right Livelihood Award. Background While her parents lived in Tan-Tan, a small city in southern Morocco with significant Sahrawi population (and former Spanish Cape Juby) where she passed her childhood, Aminatou was born in 1966 in Akka, in the Moroccan province of Tata, her grandmother's town, due to a bedouin tradition. She is not a member of the Polisario Front, although she considers the movement as the only representative of the Sahrawi people. She