Evan Mawarire
Evan Mawarire is a Zimbabwean clergyman who founded #ThisFlag Citizen’s Movement to challenge corruption, injustice, and poverty in Zimbabwe. The movement’s main objective is to empower citizens to hold the government to account. The movement organized multiple successful non-violent protests in response to unjust government policy. Mawarire was imprisoned and tortured for his work in 2016, 2017, and 2019 and charged with treason facing 80 years in prison. Evan has addressed audiences at The Atlantic Council, Yale, Harvard, the Oxford Union (UK), the Oslo Freedom Forum, and the Geneva Summit for Human Rights & Democracy. Foreign Policy magazine named him among the 100 global thinkers of 2016. The Daily Maverick Newspaper of South Africa called him the 2016 African person of the year. Evan Mawarire was a nominee for the prestigious 2018 Swedish government’s Per Anger Prize for democracy actors. He is a former fellow of Stanford University’s Centre for Democracy Development and the Rule of Law, Yale University’s World Fellows, and a Regan-Fascell Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Mawarire is currently a visiting 2022 fellow at both the University of Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins University. He also serves on the advisory board of Yale International Leadership Centre and is the current Director of Education at Renew Democracy Initiative in Washington DC.