Eleven stories of people across Europe who became unlikely Human Rights Defenders.

Across Europe, rising repression is reshaping daily life. Local people helping others are targeted and criminalized for exposing corruption, helping refugees and acting out of kindness.

In today’s climate of increasing fear and intimidation, some refuse to look away.
Award-winning activist Brian Dooley presents eleven true stories of people who chose courage over safety: a former violinist in Ukraine driving an ambulance at the eastern front of the war on Ukraine; a family in eastern Poland secretly sheltering migrants hunted in the border forest; and a Turkish scientist risking prison to expose toxic contamination threatening children’s health. In the Czech Republic, a woman transforming how sexual violence is understood and prosecuted, while volunteers in Italy treat and assist refugees arriving along the Balkan route. Communities in Bosnia and Northern Ireland resist environmentally destructive mining projects. Polish activists expose homophobia, and anonymous Baltic volunteers counter Russian propaganda, while in England, a lawyer spends decades challenging wrongful terrorism convictions.

None of these people set out to become activists. They were musicians, scientists, and neighbors who saw injustice and acted to stop it.
Drawing on decades of frontline reporting, Dooley details how imagination, persistence, and moral clarity can defy repression and change people’s lives.
Defiant reminds us that the defense of human rights begins not with institutions, but with what ordinary people can achieve when they choose to stand up for one another.

Brian Dooley is a longtime human rights activist specializing in supporting Human Rights Defenders working amid revolutions, armed conflict, and severe repression. He is an Honorary Professor of Practice at Queen’s University Belfast, a Visiting Scholar at University College London, and a Senior Advisor at Human Rights First. From 2020 to 2023, Dooley served as Senior Advisor to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders. In 2025, he received the University of Oslo Human Rights Award. He is the author of several books on civil rights and the Northern Ireland conflict.

Fionnuala D. Ní Aoláin is an Irish legal scholar and human rights expert. She served as the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter-Terrorism from 2017 to 2023 and holds professorships at the University of Minnesota Law School and Queen's University Belfast.

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