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On 27 September 2025, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk joined award-winning actor, playwright, and Global Citizen and UN Women Goodwill Ambassador Danai Gurira, along with Global Citizen Prize winners Valeriia Rachynska, Director of Human Rights, Gender and Community Development at 100% Life (Ukraine), and Omowumi Ogunrotimi, Founder and Executive Lead of Gender Mobile Initiative (Nigeria), to announce commitments to protect human rights defenders and share powerful personal stories of impact at Global Citizen Festival in New York City
‘Water is to protected. Water is not for sale. Water is to be defended.’
Doris Ramírez is a fisherwoman and a fisherfolk’s union representative from Guatemala’s southern coast. She told ISHR how her late husband’s passing drove her to embrace activism and described her aspirations for the future for her coastal community.
In March 2025, Doris attended the 58th session of the UN Human Rights Council, delivering a statement calling on Guatemala to abide by its obligations to secure the protection of marine biodiversity, the traditional rights of fisherfolk and the protection of those who are protecting the environment.
Judi Aldalati is a Syrian journalist, a researcher and human rights defender. She told ISHR how seeing the early days of the Arab Spring led her to pursue the defence of human rights and shared her aspirations for the future of Syria amidst the uncertainty that has followed the collapse of the Assad regime.
Gladys Mbuya is a lawyer by profession, a human rights defender, and a peace crusader. She is the founder of the Liberal Law Office in Cameroon and serves as the president of the International Federation of Women Lawyers for Cameroon. She also holds a role as a traditional leader.
Her work centres on promoting the recognition and respect of human rights, particularly the rights of women and girls. She represents women and girls in court who cannot afford legal fees and actively advocates for the revision of laws that discriminate against them.
Gladys faced intimidation, threats, and even attempts at arrest for her activism, yet remains steadfast in her mission. She has defended numerous individuals – including prominent activists – in cases involving arbitrary detention and violations of free expression and assembly. She was part of the legal team that defended Mimi Mefo, Ndoki Michèle, and Agbor Balla, which led to their cases being dropped at the court.
‘Human rights defence work is a noble cause. The international community should continue standing by human rights defenders. They should increase the volume of political pressure on our governments for them to fulfil their obligations under all the international conventions they have ratified.’
Angélique is a Malagasy environmental and community rights defender who founded the Razany Vohibola Association in 2016. She represents over 3,000 villagers from four communities near the Vohibola Forest and leads efforts to preserve one of Madagascar’s last remaining primary forests.
Under her leadership, and in collaboration with the Ministry of the Environment, villagers have formed patrols to monitor and protect the forest against illegal logging, poaching, and the growing impacts of climate change. Angélique and her community face ongoing threats, including direct intimidation and violence from the authorities. One of her colleagues, patrol officer Mick, was killed for speaking out against illegal land grabbing, yet his death remains unpunished by local authorities.
Despite these grave risks, Angélique continues to advocate for justice and environmental protection. She also calls for structural change, urging the Malagasy government to pass a law that protects human rights defenders and holds public officials accountable.
There is currently no law to protect human rights defenders in Madagascar. We need this law to pass. The army and the gendarmes must be trained to understand who we are so they can become our allies.
‘What we need first is peace. (…) The international community, the UN, has the ability to end what’s happening in eastern RDC – what is happening today in the East is truly alarming.’
Judith Maroy is a Congolese journalist and human rights defender from Bukavu, in the South Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Judith began her advocacy work through LUCHA, a youth-led citizen movement demanding social justice, democratic governance, and equality. She later became a journalist with La Prunelle RDC and co-founded a local organisation advocating for the rights of women, youth, and Indigenous communities.
She is calling for a just, peaceful Congo where young people have opportunities, women’s voices are heard, and no one is displaced in their own country.
Mirage news of 14 June 2025 comes with an interesting assessment of eyeWitness to Atrocities (eyeWitness) which marks its tenth anniversary. The International Bar Association (IBA) applauds the work of the pioneering initiative it founded in 2015. The launch of the eyeWitness to Atrocities app for Android phones has harnessed the power of technology in the global fight for justice. The tamper-proof photo, video and audio footage captured using the eyeWitness app, and securely stored by IBA partner LexisNexis , meets the strict evidentiary criteria required to be admissible as evidence in legal proceedings.
Jaime Carey, President of the International Bar Association, stated: ‘As we mark a decade of eyeWitness to Atrocities, we celebrate ten years at the intersection of technology, law, and human rights. .. As President of the IBA, I am proud of our member organisations that have dedicated vast amounts of pro bono work analysing footage captured using the app and I reaffirm IBA support for this vital work and its enduring impact on the global pursuit of justice.’
Mark Ellis, Executive Director of the IBA, added: ‘Footage captured with the eyeWitness to Atrocities app is invaluable in securing justice and bridging the gap between activists and the law. By ensuring that visual evidence is authenticated, the app transforms raw documentation into legally admissible proof. In a world where impunity often thrives in the absence of credible evidence, eyeWitness plays a critical role in bringing truth to light and ensuring that justice is not just a distant ideal, but a real possibility.’
Over the past decade, the eyeWitness app has become an essential tool for human rights defenders, journalists and civil society organisations documenting grave human rights violations and atrocity crimes around the world. Key achievements include:
more than 85,000 photos, videos and audio recordings captured using the app;
more than 900 training sessions delivered globally, including in active conflict zones;
more than 55,000 hours spent reviewing visual evidence;
The impact of eyeWitness has been extensive. The content captured has contributed to numerous cases and reports globally, including:
in 2018, when two commanders in the Democratic Republic of Congo were convicted of historical crimes against humanity including murder and torture;
in Ukraine, where the Kharkiv Commercial and District Administrative Courts heard four cases in 2022 relating to compensation claims for damage to non-residential property and the destruction of vital financial documents;
a case in the UK involving UK National Contact Point , where the construction company JCB’s equipment was used in the demolition of Palestinian communities and construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank;
Carrie Bowker, Director of eyeWitness to Atrocities, commented: ‘The path from documentation to justice is not always straightforward, and as we mark this milestone, we are deeply grateful to the courageous documenters capturing critical evidence of atrocity crimes, to the law firms that provide invaluable pro bono support and to LexisNexis for securely storing footage captured with the app. We aim to continue connecting frontline documenters with legal and investigative bodies that can act on the evidence they collect.’
In a 2023 outcome report the eyeWitness organisation highlighted areas of work including significant footage collection; increased and strengthened partnerships with global human rights organisations dedicated to active documentation for accountability; and expanded pro bono assistance in reviewing and analysing collected footage.
Now finally there is some closure as reported by ANP on 4 June 2025:
In El Salvador, three suspects have been found guilty of murdering four Dutch journalists that were working for IKON in 1982. All three were handed a prison sentence of 15 years, several Salvadorian media outlets reported, including the newspaper Diario El Salvador.
After a hearing that took longer than 11 hours, the jury ruled that all the suspects were involved in the death of the journalists. The suspects are the former Minister of Defense, Guillermo Garcia (91), former director of a special police service, Francisco Antonio Moran (93), and former colonel Mario Reyes Mena (85).
Koos Koster, Jan Kuiper, Hans ter Laag, and Joop Willemsen, four journalists who worked for the now defunct broadcaster IKON, were reporting on the civil war in the country in 1982. They walked into an ambush at Chalatenango and were killed. A now-repealed amnesty law prevented the prosecution of the perpetrators for years.
Sonja ter Laag (70), the sister of Hans ter Laag, responded to the verdict. “I am very happy that the people who murdered my brother have been convicted. And that they will go to their graves as murderers. We can finally close this after 43 years.”
She added that the victim’s relatives have been living in a state of hope and desperation for the convictions for 43 years. “That costs a lot of energy, you don’t want to know. And now it is over. The people who gave the order to murder my brother, an innocent 25-year-old boy, will be punished.” Ter Laag did not mind that the elderly men would not have long to live anymore. “In any case, they will not go to their grave decorated.”
The judges imposed a lower sentence than the maximum set by the law. Instead of a prison sentence of 30 years, they imposed 15 years because of the defendants’ age and poor health.
García and Morán are being treated in a private hospital. El Salvador has requested the extradition of Reyes Mena. He currently lives in the U.S.
On 23 April, 2025 OMCT made public this interview with Armel Niyongere, exiled Burundian lawyer and Secretary General of SOS-Torture Burundi, a member of the World Organization Against Torture (OMCT) SOS-Torture network. He continues to denounce human rights violations in his home country. Despite 10 years of threats and intimidation from the authorities, Mr. Niyongere continues his fight to promote and protect human rights. In this interview he talks about the difficulties of exile, the challenges facing those who defend human rights, and the role of the international community.
Born in Damascus, Syria, Lina is a filmmaker, journalist, and human rights defender, who in 2011 decided to pick up her camera and start filming, without a plan, but with the knowledge that she has a story to tell. What ensued are five years of conflict, arbitrary arrests, as well as torture and ill-treatment in detention, but also of hope that things would get better, despite a veto. Five Seasons of Revolution was recently screened at the International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights in Geneva, in an event co-hosted by OMCT, partner of the festival. In this interview, Lina tells us more about her process and the challenges she encountered in the making of the film, as well as her hopes for the future of Syria.
What made you decide to start filming?
We started shooting in the summer of 2011, and a lot was already happening in Syria, but it was not clear how things were going to go. I was optimistic, thinking it would be over in six months, maybe a year, with a release within two years. It took 12 years.
It took more than five years of filming, and then many more to edit, because the country hadn’t stabilised, and the characters’ decision to participate in the film shifted with every new development, for their own safety. We had to go back, take characters out, then put them back in, and make amendments to the storyline. But it wasn’t all negative. During this time, deepfake technology improved and gave us a solution for the anonymity issue of some of the characters who chose to stay in Syria in a way that is safe and does not interfere with the visual narrative.
What was the most challenging part about the filming process?
Not knowing where it’s heading. As a filmmaker, you have, even in documentaries, a rough script, or an idea of where you are heading, but we couldn’t. It was like surfing, we just had to keep up with weird twists and turns. At some point, there were so many arrests in the group that I was filming, the characters just kept going in and out of jail, and at any given moment, we would lose one of them. I was arrested several times and the rest of the film crew had to come up with plan Bs for ‘what if we lose the director, who also happens to be the camera person and the sole contact to all the other characters, how do we finish the film?’ There was even one editing session that was held in my absence because I was detained, and they didn’t know when I would be released. It was really challenging.
What was the most challenging part about having to change your identity several times throughout filming?
It was very confusing, but it was also very necessary. In order to make it work, you have to internalise it to a certain extent, which was challenging. This confuses your relationships with the people you’re working with, with the people you’re socialising with, with the people that trust you, despite only knowing your fake name. Very strong bonds are formed under extremely difficult conditions and something always felt wrong about not being able to be fully honest with people. it also created these compartments of who I am because different parts of me had different names in different places… and they didn’t always get along. Walking out of it was also a challenge. Normalising being one person and only using one name, only answering to one name. It was quite a journey.
Towards the end of the documentary, you talk about your experience with your arrest. Did what you experienced in custody change your approach to the film, or your activism?
I did not encounter anything during my arrest that I did not previously know exists and happens. What was detrimental was the repetition of detentions because you know you might get away with it once, maybe twice, if you’re lucky three times. But when I was released for the third time, I realised I did not know anybody that survived a fourth arrest. I felt like a cat with seven lives and I was really running out of them. I think this affected not only my decision-making in the film, but decision-making in my life in general, which obviously had consequences.
What are three things you hope people remember after watching your film?
Number one is that simplistic reductionist scenarios of war into black and white, good and bad are never true. Number two is that nobody has a blueprint for what to do in these cases. People improvise, people try to find solutions on the spot under pressure, and these are not always ideal. But also, people can be much braver than they think, because at the end of the day we are survivors, all of us, and there is a lot more to us than we sometimes give ourselves credit for. And number three, friendship is really important.
You are a filmmaker, but also a human rights defender. What are your hopes now for Syria and its people?
I hope people will be able to recover. I hope people will be given a break, given a chance to process everything they went through, given a bit of time to find a way out of this gigantic mess. It will take generations to rebuild the country. I understand that people have endured so much for so long that they cannot take one more day of it, so there is understandably also a lot of emotions. I just hope that we have the ability to open our hearts a bit more, understand each other a bit more and that people will in return give us the chance to process everything….
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 