Three women have been nominated for one of the most prestigious human rights awards: a Yemeni lawyer who revealed secret prisons and torture, a Mexican woman who fights murders of women, and a South African activist who defends women's rights.
This is the first time that the Martin Ennals Foundation Prize Referees Committee has nominated three women to win the prestigious award.
The winner of the Geneva-based Foundation Prize, named the first Secretary-General of Amnesty International, who died in 1991, will be announced in Geneva on 19 February 2020.
Ten important human rights groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, are judged by the award.
One of the candidates for the award, often referred to as the Nobel Prize for Human Rights, is Yemeni lawyer Huda al-Sarari, 42, who has worked with a number of organizations to uncover a network of secret prisons run by foreign governments in Yemen since 2015.
That year, Saudi Arabia intervened in Yemen at the head of a military alliance against Iranian-backed Houthis, who had taken control of the capital Sanaa.
Since then, the conflict has claimed tens of thousands of people, mostly civilians, and pushed millions to the brink of starvation, according to humanitarian organizations.
In recent years, al-Sarari has revealed several secret detention centers where "the worst human rights violations are committed: torture, concealment and even summary executions," the award's sponsors said in a statement.
They added that al-Sarari "collected over 250 cases of abuse in prisons and successfully persuaded international organizations - such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch - to pursue the case."
The curators praised the lawyer for continuing to pursue justice despite threats and defamation campaigns against her and her family.
Stop killing women
The second candidate, Mexican human rights activist Norma Ledesma, 53, began her campaign against the killing of women and supporting the families of the victims after her daughter Paloma disappeared while returning from school in Chihuahua.
Mexico has the highest number of murders of women in Latin America, according to UN Women.
Lidisma is one of the founders of Justice for Our Daughters, the director of the local organization that provides legal advice and support to existing cases. She is also involved in a number of organizations providing assistance to victims and has supported more than 200 investigations into cases of murder and disappearance of women on behalf of male victims. Females are credited with establishing a "special prosecutor for women victims of violence in Chihuahua."
Lidzma "despite receiving numerous death threats, continues to work in the field of human rights," the curators said.
The third candidate from South Africa, 73-year-old Sezani Ngobane, defends the rights of women and indigenous people.
Ngobane began her work as an activist in the ANC, before she founded the Rural Women's Movement, which combats gender-based violence and demands women's right to land, education, property and inheritance.