Carmel Budiardjo

A British human rights activist, founder of the organisation Tapol and a recipient of the Right Livelihood Award. Born Carmel Brickman, she came from a Jewish family in London, whose anti-fascist beliefs influenced her left-wing politics. She received a bachelor’s degree in Economics in 1946 from the University of London, where she became active in the National Union of Students. While working in Prague for the International Union of Students, she met Suwondo ‘Bud’ Budiardjo, an Indonesian government official whom she married in 1950. The couple moved to Indonesia in 1951, and she became an Indonesian citizen in 1954. She worked first as a translator for Antara, the Indonesian news agency, then in economic research for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, later studying at the University of Indonesia’s School of Economics and then lecturing at Padjadjaran University in Bandung and Res Publica (now Trisakti) University in Jakarta.