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Two Humanity in Action Senior Fellows, Zachary D. Kaufman and Noam Schimmel, have been awarded the 2024 Human Rights Champion Award by the Genocide Survivors Foundation and the Million Lives Genocide Relief Fund. This is in recognition of their remarkable work in Rwanda that supports justice, social entrepreneurship, and education.
Zachary served in the U.S. Department of Justice (located in Washington, DC, and Rwanda) in 2000 to 2002 and then the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. He played a leading role in building Rwanda’s first-ever public library, which then became the country’s national public library (see: American Friends of the Kigali Public Library). Zach was a board chair of Indego Africa. He frequently writes, teaches, and lectures about Rwanda, especially the origins, operation, and outcomes of the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda.
Noam has been a volunteer with SURF Survivor’s Fund since 2008, supporting their mission to advance the respect and fulfillment of the human rights of survivors of the Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi, including their right to reparative justice. He is a lecturer in African Studies, Global Studies, and Development Studies at University of California, Berkeley where he teaches and researches human rights and the experiences of Rwandan genocide survivors and their personal narratives of survival and perspectives on reparative justice. He recently served as co-editor of a special issue of the journal Peace Review, examining reparative justice in an African context. Links to his articles can be found here.
As Senior Fellows of Humanity in Action, we are grateful to the outstanding services to human rights, democracy, and justice that both Zach and Noam have modeled throughout their academic and professional careers. They have provided an unwavering level of value to the Humanity in Action community.
