Past and present

I did not expect to meet a Daniel from the past on the way to meeting up with a future one. But there by the coffee, toast, and marmalade at a Kampala guesthouse was the unmistakable voice of Baroness Caroline Cox, WORLD's 2004 Daniel of the Year.

Baroness Cox and a colleague were on their way to meet with the British High Commissioner. The "voice of the voiceless" was just back from a grueling trip to northern Uganda, where a 20-year conflict started by the wacko Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) has killed 500,000 people and left nearly 1 million homeless and destitute in camps. Cox's specialty is drawing attention to out-of-the-way horrors, and her focus remains with unknown people suffering in hidden pockets of the world.

She is impatient with so much attention on the Middle East and the Muslim-dominated Darfur region of Sudan. The Christian groups have all moved to Darfur, she said, leaving unhelped the persecuted Christians in south Sudan. "The Christian organizations are losing in peace what they paid such a great price to keep in war," a Sudanese priest named Bishop Taban in the southern town of Yei told her.

Cox herself plans to return to south Sudan next month. In the meantime, there are a trip to Burma, speaking engagements in the United States, and a new book: This Immoral Trade (2007, Monarch Books), a story on modern-day slavery she co-wrote with colleague John Marks.

Getting by on little sleep is a common characteristic of WORLD's growing list of Daniels. That evening Cox stayed up late into the night writing a report for the British government. One of this year's Daniels, Peter Akinola, laughed when asked about his (notoriously meager) sleep habits: "My boss told me there is no rest for the wicked. After retirement I will rest."

Daniels of the Year

Click on the names below to read the archived articles of the past winners as well as this year's pick: