Kumi Naidoo

Kumi Naidoo is a South African human rights activist and the International Executive Director of international environmentalist group, Greenpeace. He is the first African to head the organisation. After battling apartheid in South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s through the Helping Hands Youth Organisation, Naidoo led global campaigns to end poverty and protect human rights. Recently, he has led the Global Campaign for Climate Action, which brings together environmental, aid, religious and human rights groups, labor unions, scientists and others and has organized mass demonstrations around climate negotiations. In June 2011, Kumi Naidoo spent four days in a Greenlandic prison after scaling an oil platform owned by Cairn Energy, as part of Greenpeace's "Go Beyond Oil" campaign.

2011