The historic event at Uhuru Park might have been momentous, but to some who have walked the reform path for decades it was a sentimental affair. Some like veteran politician Martin Shikuku, who participated in the formulation of the old Constitution at Lancaster in United Kingdom, could not restrain themselves from dropping a tear.

Thirty years ago, a trade union forced the Communist Party into a retreat that marked the beginning of the end of Soviet Europe. Solidarity's legacy – for Poland and beyond – mustn't be forgotten.

For five years, Chavia Ali’s attempts to start a disability rights group were thwarted — by prejudice, a lack of money and the Syrian government’s stranglehold on civic life. The government gave her a license, but prevented the group from meeting because of what Ms. Ali believes was a whisper campaign against her, a Kurd with a growing profile.

For years, environmentalists have risked arrests and sometimes beatings by the police and masked plainclothes thugs in their efforts to halt the construction of a highway linking Moscow to St. Petersburg that they say would destroy the Khimki Forest, one of the few remaining in the Moscow region.

In an interview with the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, Neda Agha Soltan’s mother, Hajar Rostami, appealed to international human rights organizations and the international court in The Hague to help prosecute her daughter’s murderer.