Marielle Franco

Marielle Franco grew up in the Mare favela complex in Rio de Janeiro, became pregnant at nineteen, and studied social sciences at university after winning a scholarship, work she paid for partly through the death of a friend killed by a stray bullet during a police operation, an event she said radicalised her. She worked for a state legislator on a human rights commission for years before running for Rio's city council herself in 2016, campaigning as a Black, gay woman from the favelas who wanted the council to reflect the city it governed.

Elected with the fifth-highest vote of any councillor, she used her seat to document police killings in Rio's favelas, oppose the military intervention ordered in the city's security in 2018, and push for LGBT rights and abortion access, making her a target of threats from the militia groups, often made up of off-duty police, who control large parts of the city's periphery.

In March 2018 she was shot dead in her car along with her driver shortly after leaving an event on empowering Black women. The investigation dragged on for years before two former police officers were charged with the killing, and evidence later implicated a militia leader and a sitting congressman in ordering it.

Her death made her an international symbol of the risks faced by Black, LGBT and favela activists in Brazil.