Some of the people who were passed over for Obama. Source.



In 2002, Sima Samar became the first women's affairs minister in Afghanistan's post-Taliban interim government. Prior to her appointment, Samar had dedicated her life to the preservation of basic rights for women and girls in Afghanistan. She fled her country in 1984 during the Soviet ocupation and moved to the border town of Quetta, Pakistan, where she founded the Shuhada Organization to support the education and health needs of Afghan women and girls. With dogged persistence and at great personal risk, she kept her schools and clinics open in Afghanistan even during the most repressive days of the Taliban regime, whose laws prohibited the education of girls past the age of eight. When the Taliban fell, Samar returned to Kabul and accepted the post of Minister for Women's Affairs, even as she continued to run her clinics and schools. But her persistent calls for equality and justice attracted the attention of Afghanistan's powerful religious leaders, who still saw no place for women in Afghan public life. She was taunted by male colleagues, and she began to receive thinly veiled death threats from Islamic conservatives hoping to silence her. She was ultimately forced to step down from her cabinet post, which was left unfilled. She subsequently was offered a non-cabinet position chairing the Independent Afghanistan Human Rights Commission, a position she still holds.





Ingrid Betancourt, French-Colombian ex-hostage.

Ingrid Betancourt holds her award from Reporteres Sans Frontieres on Sept. 24, 2009 in Montreal. Betancourt was captured by FARC in 2002 while campaigning for the Colombian presidency and held for more than six years before being rescued.

If anyone knows how to bounce back from tragedy, it’s Betancourt. During the Colombian senator’s 2002 presidential campaign, she was abducted by a marxist organization and held captive for six-and-a-half years. Since being rescued in July, 2008, she has been dubbed a “freedom fighter” and “symbol of hope.”




Dr. Denis Mukwege jokes with patients outside the surgical ward of Panzi hospital in Bukavu, DRC. On this photo's date, Dr Mukwege had treated 21,000 women suffering from devastating gynecological injuries as a result of rape in Congo's brutal war. He is the only gynecologist treating these wounds in the country. Oct. 14, 2008

Seeing pregnant women arrive at the hospital on a donkey and dying during childbirth encouraged Mukwege to study gynaecology and obstetrics. Noticing that so many women had been sexually abused, he later founded the Panzi hospital in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Hundreds of thousands of female sexual violence victims have been helped so far.


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I guess words and promises are more important then actions. He wasnt in office for Two weeks when he was nominated for the NPP.