Alliance party leader, Naomi Long, has been named as one of the BBC’s 100 Women list for 2022.
The list “celebrates the achievements of women internationally, from grassroots volunteers to global leaders”. It includes women from a wide variety of backgrounds including sports, culture, human rights activism, politics, sports, arts etc. It is accompanied by a series of documentaries and intervews across the BBC internationally.
Naomi Long, from our sister party the Alliance, has had a distinguished career in Northern Irish politics. She served as Justice Minister from 2020 until 2022. During this time, according to the BBC’s citation, she “brought in legislation to tackle a number of new sexual offences in Northern Ireland this year, including downblousing, cyber-flashing and abolishing the ‘rough sex’ defence. Having received death threats herself, Long has also sought to raise awareness of the harassment of female politicians.”
A civil engineer by profession, Naomi was a member of Belfast City Council from 2001 until 2010,including a year as the Lord Mayor of Belfast. She was MP for Belfast East from 2010 until 2015, member of the European parliament from 2019 to 2020 and a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly in various periods from 2003 until the present day.
Also on the BBC’s 100 Women list are Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Roza Salih.
Nazanin is a charity worker who was arbitarily detained in Iran. Now released, the BBC list quotes here as saying ““The world should unite to make sure that there is no-one held either hostage or in prison for something they haven’t done”.
The BBC list says that Roza Silah is “the first refugee to be elected to Glasgow City Council, having arrived in Scotland as a young girl when her family was forced to flee Iraq. Now the SNP councillor for the Greater Pollok ward, Salih has campaigned for refugee rights since she was a teenager and she and her school friends came together to protest the detention of a friend.
Their campaign, the Glasgow Girls, drew national attention to the treatment of asylum seekers. Salih has gone on to co-found Scottish Solidarity with Kurdistan, visiting Kurdish regions in Turkey as a human rights activist.”
You can view the full BBC 100 Women list for 2022 here.
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Soho Parish primary: Without this school it's all just tourists, isn't it?
Political history points against early general elections
Working 9 to 5
Is Farage set to lose Clacton?
Jana
Dav
Mohammed Amin
Ruth Bright
Simon Costain
One Comment
Very pleased to see Naomi Long included in this international list of influential and inspiring women leaders. Its worth taking afew minutes to scroll through the list.
Naomi is a very impressive speaker; clear, direct and pragmatic. I have often wondered why we seem to ignore our Northern Ireland sister party Alliance, we have so much common ground with them. and it would increase our visibility, which I think we can all agree is badly needed, in an arena where most people have very little knowledge or understanding. Perhaps we could invite her to Spring Conference?