Santiago Canton will be leaving his post as Executive Director of RFK Partners for Human Rights at the end of this week as he has accepted the position of Secretary for Human Rights for Buenos Aires in Argentina. He started in 2012.
[Santiago Canton is also an Adjunct Professor at American University’s Washington College of Law, the Georgetown University Law Center, and the Universidad de Buenos Aires. In 2013, Mr. Canton served as a member of the World Bank Panel of Experts on Human Rights, part of a process that reviewed the bank’s environmental and social safeguard policies. From 2001 to 2012, Mr. Canton was the Executive Secretary of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. In 1998, he was elected as the first Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression in the Inter-American System. From 1994 to 1998, Mr. Canton was Director for Latin America and the Caribbean for the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs. Mr. Canton was a political assistant to President Carter in democratic development programs in countries in Latin America. In 2005, Mr. Canton was awarded the Chapultepec Grand Prize for freedom of expression throughout the Americas.]
In 2012, she was given an International Women of Courage Award. In December 2014, a Saudi Arabian judge imposed a travel ban on Samar. “Samar Badawi’s arrest today is yet another alarming setback for human rights in Saudi Arabia and demonstrates the extreme lengths to which the authorities are prepared to go in their relentless campaign to harass and intimidate human rights defenders into silent submission,” said Philip Luther, AI’S Director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme. “Just weeks after Saudi Arabia shocked the world by executing 47 people in a single day, including the Shi’a Muslim cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, it has once again demonstrated its utter disregard for human rights. Samar Badawi has been arrested purely for peacefully exercising her right to freedom of expression, she must be immediately and unconditionally released.”
According to AFP, Raif Badawi’s wife, Ensaf Haidar, who lives in Canada as a refugee said in her Twitter account that her sister-in-law was arrested on the charge of directing a Twitter account named “the Monitor of Human Rights in Saudi Arabia @WaleedAbulkhair.”
Samar is the sister of Raif Badawi, a well-known blogger who was awarded the EU’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought (https://thoolen.wordpress.com/2015/10/29/saudi-blogger-raif-badawi-awarded-europes-sakharov-prize/). Moreover, Waleed Abulkhair, who is Samar’s ex-husband, is also serving a 15-year jail sentence.
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 
US First Lady Michelle Obama (left) and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (right) pose with Samar Badawi (centre) as she receives the 2012 International Women of Courage Award.