Saïda Keller-Messahli, born July 25, 1957, in Aouina near Bizerte in northern Tunisia, is a Swiss-Tunisian freelance journalist, writer and human rights activist.
She is the founder and president of the Forum for a Progressive Islam and received the 2016 Swiss Prize for Human Rights.
The Swiss association Terre des hommes placed her with a host family from 1964 to 1970 in Grindelwald (Bern) where she educated in the village school.
Because her family was too poor to raise her, Saïda Keller-Messahli returned to Tunisia at the age of 13 following the divorce of the welcoming couple.
She advocated the creation of a register and an authorization system for imams and a limitation of the number of mosques to 300 in Switzerland.