On 23 December 2025, the Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders, Mary Lawlor, renewed her call on authorities in Togo to release Togolese-Irish citizen and human rights defender Abdoul Aziz Goma from prison on the seventh anniversary of his arrest.
“Abdoul has now been arbitrarily detained for seven years and has been on hunger strike since 8 November 2025, protesting against the injustices he has faced. As he marks his 44th day without food, I am seriously concerned for his life,” Lawlor said.
Abdoul Aziz Goma was arrested in Lomé in 2018 after providing shelter to a group of young people who had travelled to the capital to demonstrate. Although he did not participate in any protests himself, Aziz Goma offered help to the youths when approached by an acquaintance.
Aziz Goma was initially held in secret for a number of years before being transferred to Togo’s formal prison system in 2022. He has been reportedly subjected to ill-treatment and denial of adequate medical care in prison, which have left him with a debilitating health condition.
In February 2025, when he was finally tried, Aziz Goma was convicted on multiple charges, including undermining national security, in a single day procedure and sentenced to ten years in prison.
Aziz Goma is reportedly very weak from hunger and reduced to spending much of the day lying down.
In September 2023, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention determined that Aziz Goma’s ongoing detention was arbitrary.
The Special Rapporteur has also raised her concerns about Aziz Goma’s treatment and ongoing detention with Togolese authorities in 2021 and 2024.
Nathalia Bonilla is an environmental human rights defender from Ecuador who works in the protection of the rights of Nature. She told ISHR about her country’s sharp policy turn in favour of extractive activities and spoke about the ‘utopia’ she and her peers would like to see in its place. ‘A revolution where you can’t dance is not my revolution,’ Nathalia said, in arguing for an ‘environmentalism for the people’.
Salvino Oliveira was honored as a 2025 Young Activist Summit Laureate. | Courtesy of Jefferson Teófilo
On 22 December 2025, Global Citizen published the story of how at 27, Salvino Oliveira went from being a street vendor in Rio’s Cidade de Deus to a city councilor leading education reform. This was followed by him starting his first social project: making tuition free for poor children at 15 years old. In recognition of his efforts towards making education more accessible, Oliveira has been honored as a 2025 Young Activist Summit Laureate. Here, Oliveira shares how education transformed his life, and why he’s committed to making that transformation accessible to every young person in Brazil’s favelas.
My name is Salvino Oliveira, and I am everything I’ve been.
I say this because my story begins in a tiny house in Cidade de Deus, meaning City of God, a favela in Rio de Janeiro. At 13, I started working to help my family survive: selling water bottles at traffic lights, candy on buses, working as a street vendor, upholsterer, construction helper — anything honest that could put food on the table.
But Cidade de Deus is more than poverty. It’s the Rio neighborhood with the most public squares, making it a natural place for culture, leisure, and community gathering. It’s the birthplace of funk carioca — the soundtrack of favela resistance and joy. It’s also home to Olympic athletes and artists. These public spaces and that cultural richness shaped who I became, the friends I made, my first loves, the things I believe in.
Then I got lucky. I was selected by lottery to study at Colégio Pedro II, one of Brazil’s most prestigious tuition-free public schools. In Brazil, elite families typically send their children to private schools, while public schools serve the poor; a few exceptional public institutions, like Pedro II, offer quality education through competitive lottery systems. That education changed everything. It opened a door that seemed permanently locked for someone from my background. At 15, even while working and living with gun violence all around me, I understood that if this access had reached me, I had a responsibility to give it back.
At 15, I created my first social project: free tutoring for children in Cidade de Deus.
When I entered Brazil’s federal university system to study Public Administration at Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), a tuition-free institution, like all public universities in Brazil, that social project grew into AfroEducando (later renamed Mais Nós), a community prep course for university entrance exams. Within one year, we had 22 units across Rio’s metropolitan region, all volunteer-run, helping first-generation Black students from favelas access higher education.
When the “social bug” bites you, there’s no going back — and so the projects continued. I co-founded Projeto Manivela to train community leaders to engage with the government and turn demands into policies. Then came PerifaConnection, a media platform where young people from favelas across Brazil write columns in major national newspapers about politics, economics, culture, climate, and human rights. The idea was simple and radical: we refuse to let other people tell our story for us. Mainstream Brazilian media have historically portrayed favelas primarily through the lens of crime and poverty. Today, favela youth occupy editorial space in national media, changing how Brazil sees its peripheries.
I became an activist in 2018 during the federal military intervention in Rio’s security forces. Working at the Public Security Observatory, I saw firsthand how policies treated favelas like war zones, with heavily armed police operations causing civilian casualties. As I became more visible in my community, friends warned me: “Be careful, you’re an activist now. This can put you at risk.” That’s when I understood that fighting for education and rights in Rio means challenging power structures involving politics, money, and organized crime that often operate in contested urban territories.
The first Sunday in December is Lawyers’ Day in Belarus. It iscelebrated against the backdrop of the fact that at least 18 lawyers, human rights activists, and legal professionals remain in prison. Since 2020, according to the Right to Defence project, 146 lawyers have had their licenses revoked, and dozens have been charged with administrative and criminal offences. Among those currently imprisoned for political reasons are Aliaksei Barodka, Vital Brahinets, Aliaksandr Danilevich, Maksim Znak, Anastasia Lazarenka, Siarhei Khlystou, and Yuliya Yurhilevich.
On November 29, the Homyel Regional Court convicted 41-year-old preacher Aliaksei Yahiela, charged with “assisting extremist activity” under two parts of Article 361-4 of the Criminal Code. Yahiela, who has a medical background but also worked as an evangelical preacher and healthy-lifestyle activist, had attracted attention, even from state media, for his anti-smoking initiative. Initially, it was unknown what sentence Aliaksei would receive.
However, it later emerged that he had been sentenced to imprisonment and is currently being held at Homiel’s Pretrial Detention Center No. 3.
Marharyta Yasevich, 29, a BSU history graduate from Lida, was convicted of “assisting extremist activity” under Parts 1 and 2 of Article 361-4 of the Criminal Code. Yasevich, who, after graduating, ran a business in Smolensk and lived in Samakhvalavichy for the last few years, was sentenced, according to preliminary information, to imprisonment under house arrest.
The undersigned organisations recall that Ales Bialiatski, and Uladzimir Labkovich were arbitrarily detained on 14 July 2021, prosecuted, and sentenced to 10 and 7 years in prison respectively on 3 March 2023 in retaliation for their legitimate and peaceful human rights activities. Their imprisonment constituted a grave violation of Belarus’ international human rights obligations, including the rights to freedom of expression, association, and fair trial.
While their release brings long-overdue relief to them, their families, their colleagues and the human rights community around the world, we stress that this step remains insufficient as long as hundreds of human rights defenders, journalists, lawyers, activists, and political opponents remain arbitrarily detained in Belarus on politically motivated charges solely for exercising their fundamental freedoms, and repressions against Belarusian dissidents continue unabated. In particular, Valiantsin Stefanovic, former Vice President of FIDH arrested along Ales Bialiatski and Uladzimir Labkovic in July 2021, women human rights defender and Viasna member Marfa Rabkova, detained since September 2020, and founder of Human Constanta woman human rights defender Nasta Loika, arbitrarily detained since September 2022, were not among the released political prisoners. Alongside them, numerous human rights journalists, lawyers, and trade union activists remain arbitrarily detained, including Andrzej Poczobut, Katsiaryna Andreyeva, Ihar Ilyash, Danil Palianski, Pavel Dabravolski, Andrei Aliaksandrau, and many others.
The undersigned organisations call on the Belarusian authorities to immediately and unconditionally release all political prisoners and all those arbitrarily detained, to put an end to judicial harassment and reprisals against civil society, and to repeal repressive legislation used to criminalise peaceful dissent and freedom of expression. The authorities must also ensure full rehabilitation, including the quashing of convictions and restoration of civil and political rights, for all those unlawfully detained for years.
The undersigned organisations further urge the international community to continue to closely monitor the situation in Belarus and to take all available legal, political, and diplomatic measures to ensure accountability for the grave human rights violations and international crimes, including by referring the situation to the International Criminal Court.
Signatories:
International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), in the framework of the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders
World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), in the framework of the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders
Human Rights Center Viasna
Human Rights Center, Georgia
ILI Foundation, Kazakhstan
Civil Society Institute, Armeniaia
Public Association “Dignity”, Kazakhstan
Promo-LEX Association, Moldova
Norwegian Helsinki Committee, Norway
Östgruppen (Swedish Initiative for Democracy and Human Rights)
Austausch e.V., Germany
Belarusian Helsinki Committee (BHC)
Hungarian Helsinki Committee, Hungary
Human Rights Center of Azerbaijan, Azerbaijan
aditus foundation, Malta
LIBERECO – Partnership for Human Rights, Germany/Switzerland
Redress
The International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI)
ARTICLE 19
People In Need
aditus foundation
Front Line Defenders
Bir Duino-Kyrgyzstan
European Platform for Democratic Elections (EPDE)
International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED)
On 15 December 2025 Emma Woollacott, in Forbes, referred to a new study that shows that 7 in 10 women human rights defenders, activists and journalists have experienced online violence in the course of their work. Produced through the UN Women’s ACT to End Violence against Women program and supported by the European Commission, “Tipping point: The chilling escalation of violence against women in the public sphere” draws on a global survey of women from 119 countries.
Along with online threats and harassment, more than 4 in 10 have experienced offline harm linked to online abuse — more than twice as many as in 2020, the researchers found. This can range from verbal harassment right up to physical assault, stalking and swatting.
“These figures confirm that digital violence is not virtual — it’s real violence with real-world consequences,” said Sarah Hendricks, director of policy, programme and intergovernmental division at UN Women.
“Women who speak up for our human rights, report the news or lead social movements are being targeted with abuse designed to shame, silence and push them out of public debate. Increasingly, those attacks do not stop at the screen — they end at women’s front doors. We cannot allow online spaces to become platforms for intimidation that silence women and undermine democracy.”
And AI is only making things worse, with almost 1 in 4 women human rights defenders, activists and journalists having experienced AI-assisted online violence, such as deepfake imagery and manipulated content. This is most often the case for writers and public communicators who focus on human rights issues, such as social media content creators and influencers, for whom the figure reaches 30%.
“Gender-based online violence is not a new phenomenon, but its scale certainly is,” said report co-author Lea Hellmueller, associate professor in journalism at City St George’s and associate dean for research in the School of Communication and Creativity.
“AI tools enable the production of cheaper and faster abusive content, which is detrimental to women in public life — and beyond,” Hellmueller added.
Tech firms are partly responsible, the researchers said, with the report calling for better tools to identify, monitor, report and fend off AI-assisted online violence. The researchers also want to see more legal and regulatory mechanisms to force tech firms to prevent their technologies being deployed against women in the public sphere.
“Our next steps include publishing data from the survey about the opportunities for, and barriers to, law enforcement and legal redress for survivors of online violence,” said Julie Posetti, chair of the Centre for Journalism and Democracy at City St George’s, University of London, one of the authors of the report. “We will also focus on creative efforts to counter gender-based online violence and policy recommendations to help hold the Big Tech facilitators of this dangerous phenomenon accountable.”
In 2025 the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) welcomed 14 new organisations, on the occasion of its 42nd Congress, which took place in Bogotá at the end of October. The federation now has 194 members in 120 countries. Of varied origins, cultures, organisations, issues and sizes, yet united by a common struggle: the universal defence of human rights. These 14 memberships demonstrate the vitality of the human rights movement across the world, the relevance of the growth of an international federation dedicated to this universalist cause, and the need to bring together the strengths of civil society worldwide in the face of the challenges it is faced with. Local struggles, global problems, the organisations of FIDH find within the federation a space of solidarity where they can exchange ideas and collectively develop solutions to the shrinking civic space observed throughout the world.
“With these new arrivals, our federation is growing and becoming stronger, particularly on the Asian continent“, says Alexis Deswaef, President of FIDH, elected at the same congress in Bogotá.
Cressida Kuala lives in a small gold mining town in the Highlands Region of Porgera District in the Enga Province of Papua New Guinea. In 2011, Cressida founded the Porgera Red Wara (River) Women’s Association, and she started speaking out about issues such as environmental degradation, chemical waste, pollution, expropriation of land, and the impact on the local community.
On 4 December 2025, 24 human rights defenders, including Seán Binder and Athanasios (Nassos) Karakitsos, will appear before the Mytilene Court of Appeals, on the island of Lesvos. This comes seven years (!!) after their initial arrests. The human rights defenders are facing felony charges of ‘membership of a criminal organisation’, ‘facilitation of the entry of third country nationals into the country’, and ‘money laundering’. The charges stem from work carried out by the defenders in Greece between 2016 and 2018, where they assisted people on the move whose lives were at risk while trying to reach safety to the island of Lesvos. If convicted, they face up to 20 years of imprisonment.
Seán Binder and Athanasios (Nassos) Karakitsos are migrant rights defenders who worked with Emergency Response Center International (ERCI) between 2016 and 2018. The humanitarian work carried out by ERCI was extensive, and included helping more than 1000 people reach safety, organising workshops and swimming classes for migrant children in the Kara Tepe camp, and providing residents in the Moria camp with medical assistance. ERCI was registered as a non-governmental organisation and regularly cooperated with Greek authorities, including with the Greek Coast Guard on rescue operations. The organisation was dissolved after the criminalisation of its members and volunteers.
In September 2023, the Supreme Court upheld the Court of Appeals’ decision, delivered on 13 January 2023, to dismiss four misdemeanour charges of ‘forgery’, ‘espionage’, ‘possession of unlicensed radio’ and ‘infringement of state secrets’ faced by Seán Binder and seven other non-Greek speaking defenders. This was due to procedural flaws, including key documents, such as the indictments, having not been translated for the accused. In January 2024, the remaining sixteen human rights defenders, including Athanasios (Nassos) Karakitsos, were acquitted of the same charges. [https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2021/11/17/greeces-mistaken-deterrence-migrants-and-aid-workers-facing-heavy-prison-sentences/]
On 21 August 2018, Lesvos Police arrested Seán Binder after he attended the police station voluntarily, having learned that another human rights defender had been arrested earlier that day. In the following days, they also arrested Athanasios (Nassos) Karakitsos, the field director of ERCI at the time. The human rights defenders were kept in pre-trial detention for more than one hundred days, accused of ‘people smuggling’, ‘money laundering’, ‘espionage’, and ‘membership of a criminal organisation.’ In December 2018, the human rights defenders were conditionally released on bail.
The upcoming trial is the second court case since 2018 initiated against the 24 human rights defenders based on their work, aiding, assisting and saving the lives of migrants and refugees, who were trapped in the Aegean Sea between Türkiye and Greece.
Front Line Defenders calls on the authorities in Greece to:
Immediately and unconditionally drop all charges against Seán Binder and Athanasios (Nassos) Karakitsos, and the other 22 human rights defenders who are also on trial;
Cease the criminalisation of human rights defenders who peacefully defend the rights of the migrants and refugees, including the humanitarian assistance to save the lives of people stranded at the marine and land borders;
Guarantee in all circumstances that all human rights defenders in Greece are able to carry
out their legitimate human rights activities without fear of reprisals and free of all restrictions, including judicial harassment.
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 