From Adventurer to Human Rights Activist

Going travelling, crossing borders - that is what Rüdiger Nehberg always wants to do. He jostled into the world as a premature baby in 1935 and, at four, made his escape to the Teutoburg forest, where he spent his first night in the open and gathered survival experiences.

However, his life then took a different track: for 25 years he worked in Hamburg in a large confectionary shop. However, independent travel and survival did not leave him completely: He became the first person to sail the Blue Nile; he walked through the Ethiopian Danakil Desert, crossed the Atlantic three times - with a pedal boat, a bamboo raft and on a massive fir tree. He entered into a footrace against an Aborigine across Australia. And these are only a few examples of his adventures.

Then a change: in 1982, he was witness to the threatened genocide of the Yanomami Indians in Brazil. The adventurer found a purpose. With books, TV films and spectacular campaigns he mobilised help. In 2000, the Yanomami reached an acceptable peace. Nehberg received the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Time for a new challenge. That is the fight against Female Genital Mutilation. As conventional organisations did not want to support his vision, he founded his own human rights organisation TARGET without further ado in 2000. Together with the highest Muslim authorities, he wants to have the practice declared incompatible with the ethics of Islam and a sin. Until announcement in Mecca.

You can find out more about Rüdiger Nehberg on his personal homepage (see above). Please note that his site is only available in German.