Ali Farzat

In 2011, he received the Sakharov Prize for peace. Farzat was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2012. Farzat was born and raised in the city of Hama, in central Syria, on 22 June 1951. His first cartoon dealt with the Évian Accords negotiations between Algerians and French officials. In 1969, he began drawing caricatures for the state-run daily, al-Thawra. He enrolled at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Damascus in 1970, but left before completing his studies in 1973. In the mid-1970s, he moved to another government-controlled daily, Tishreen, where his cartoons appeared every day.