Every life is precious. Everyone gone is missed. There are those who have lived larger, however, whose work and presence sends ripples far beyond the ordinary. Alison des Forges, whose active witness of the Rwandan Genocide brought some measure of solace and justice to the survivors, and Beverly Eckert who led the citizen charge against the stonewalling US government to create the 9/11 commission, are two such souls.

George Packer remembers des Forges in The New Yorker.

…anything Des Forges did that was connected with Rwanda, she did with all her might. And she managed to do it without the self-righteous territoriality that is the occupational vice of human-rights experts. Her attachment to the country and its people seemed neither saintly nor professional, but entirely human.

Other obituary remembrances are here and here.

In May 1994, several weeks into the mass killing of Rwanda’s Tutsi minority, Dr. Des Forges called for the killings to be officially declared a genocide. By then about 200,000 people had been killed.

“Governments hesitate to call the horror by its name,” Dr. Des Forges wrote in The New York Times, “for to do so would oblige them to act: signatories to the Convention for the Prevention of Genocide, including the United States, are legally bound to ‘prevent and punish’ it.”

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Beverly Eckert is remembered by Robert Kennedy, Jr,

Beverly Eckert was a key member of the now-defunct 9/11 Family Steering Committee, an offshoot of the Coalition for an Independent 9/11 Commission, which advocated the creation of an independent commission to investigate the intelligence failures that made 9/11 possible. The coalition represented a wide array of 9/11 families’ organizations, including Families of September 11, Sept. 11 Advocates (also known as “The Jersey Girls”), and Voices of September 11. Although the call for a commission was initially resisted by the Bush Administration, the coalition eventually prevailed in the creation of the 9/11 Commission.

Beverly cooperated with and monitored the 9/11 Commission, but later criticized the commission’s final report, claiming that commission members had only selective memories of all the evidence they had been presented. She also later complained publicly that many of the protective measures recommended by the 9/11 Commission were never implemented.

And others….