Raed al-Saleh

Raed al-Saleh was running an electronics shop in Idlib province when Syria's civil war began in 2011 and government bombing turned his town into a target. He joined local volunteers who were improvising rescue work with hand tools, pulling neighbours from the rubble of buildings hit by airstrikes and barrel bombs, and rose to lead what became known as the White Helmets, formally the Syria Civil Defence.

Under his direction the organisation grew into a network of thousands of volunteers across opposition-held areas, credited with saving well over a hundred thousand lives in a war where hospitals and rescue services were themselves frequently struck. The volunteers worked without weapons, wearing white helmets so combatants could identify them, though dozens were killed on the job over the course of the war. The group's rescues, filmed and shared widely, brought global attention to the bombing of Syrian civilians and won the White Helmets a Right Livelihood Award and a Nobel Peace Prize nomination, alongside accusations from the Syrian and Russian governments that Saleh has always denied.

After the fall of the Assad government in December 2024, Saleh was appointed minister of emergency and disaster management in Syria's transitional administration, moving from rescuing people under the old regime to building the state apparatus meant to do it under the new one.