European Young Leaders (#EYL40)

Ifrah Ahmed is a Somali-Irish social activist and advocate for the eradication of female genital mutilation (FGM). She is the Founder of the Ifrah Foundation, devoted to the elimination of FGM in her native Somalia and the Horn of Africa. As a child, Ahmed underwent forced mutilation and later fled to Ireland during the war in Somalia in her teenage years, where she was granted political asylum. She became the first woman to broadcast her testimony about undergoing FGM and has served as an advisor to the Somali president and government on gender. Ahmed is also a multi-award winning international advocate for the global elimination of FGM. Along with community empowerment, media and film are central tools to her advocacy work. She has made a short documentary on the death of a 10-year-old girl due to FGM-induced complications. The award-winning, feature-length film “A Girl from Mogadishu” documents her experiences of gender-based violence and turns it into a force for change.

Camilla Appelgren is an environmental activist, who hails from Sweden but has called Malta home for over two decades. She founded Malta Clean Up to inspire citizen climate action by organising monthly clean-ups in different locations across the island, as well as to mobilise public support for clean-up and waste reduction efforts in the face of environmental degradation. Appelgren also built up the patrolling ranger unit at the Majjistral National Park. Her role is to ensure adherence to the park’s site regulations and documentation of environmental crimes, such as poaching and dumping of waste. A strong advocate against single-use plastics, she strives towards a zero-waste lifestyle and encourages others to adopt sustainable practices in their everyday lives. Appelgren ran as a Democratic Party (PD) candidate in the 2019 European elections. Although she was not elected to the European Parliament, the support she received from voters defied expectations, in no small part due to her passion for the environment and commitment to her community.

A human rights lawyer and defender, Oleksandra Matviichuk is the first-ever Ukrainian Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. She was awarded the esteemed prize for her work with the Center for Civil Liberties on democratic reform campaigns in Ukraine and the OSCE region. The organisation has been documenting war crimes committed by Russian troops since the initial invasion of Crimea, but also develops legislative changes, exercises public oversight over law enforcement agencies and the judiciary, and implements international solidarity programmes. Matviichuk coordinated the Euromaidan SOS civic initiative to provide legal assistance following the government’s crackdown on Euromaiden protesters, which has since monitored political persecution in the illegally occupied regions of Crimea and Donbas. Matviichuk has led similar campaigns, including #LetMyPeopleGo and #SaveOlegSentsov, to fight for the release of political prisoners detained by Russian authorities. Having authored reports for several United Nations bodies, the Council of Europe, the EU, the OSCE and the International Criminal Court, she received the Democracy Defender Award and is the country’s first female candidate to be nominated to the UN Committee against Torture.

Bart Staszewski is a Polish filmmaker and fierce champion of LGBTQI+ rights. His “Article 18” documentary details the LGBTQI+ struggle for equality in the country to showcase that the government has failed to introduce legislation that protects same-sex relationships. Staszewski was among the organisers of the first-ever Equality March and went on to establish an association of the same name. He also belongs to Miłość Nie Wyklucza (Love Does Not Exclude), an organisation that fights for marriage equality, and serves as the Co-Founder, CEO and Chairman of the Board at the Basta Foundation, which monitors homophobic and transphobic hate speech in Polish media. Notably, Staszewski created the internationally acclaimed “Zones” photography project to remind politicians of their LGBTQI+ constituents and protest the infamous ‘LGBT-free zones’ in approximately 100 Polish municipalities. He was named an Obama Leader for Europe by the Barack Obama Foundation and among the TIME100 Next rising individuals.