No-one will have missed the recent media hype surrounding the opposite candidacies of US President Trump and UN rapporteur Francesca Albanese for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. This blog with its focus on human rights defenders and their awards would be amiss in not taking note, even if the Nobel Prize is foremost a peace prize not necessarly a human rights award. [see also my piece of 2012 https://global.comminit.com/content/nobel-prize-peace-not-necessarily-human-rights]
So, it is not excluded that the ‘making peace at any cost’ considerations will prevail, but my bet is that the Peace Prize Committee will be careful in ignoring the massive support from the world’s human rights community who have massively come out against the Trump administration’s sanctions against Albanese. Human rights should trump ‘peace’ on this occasion.
Nominations for a Nobel Peace Prize for Francesca Albanese are gathering steam. See the links below:
On 3 July 2025, the undersigned 22 organizations, expressed their deep concern over the increasing use of criminal law without due process guarantees, the harassment, the stigmatization, and the persecution by Salvadoran authorities against human rights defenders, community leaders, environmental activists, university professors, lawyers, journalists, and other voices critical of the government.
Prominent journalists, activists, and lawyers, such as former prosecutor and defenderRuth López and professor and constitutional lawyerEnrique Anaya, have been arbitrarily detained in retaliation for their work documenting and denouncing corruption, human rights violations, and attacks on the rule of law in El Salvador. Both are in prolonged pretrial detention and face spurious and unfounded charges of embezzlement and money laundering, respectively. These detentions send an intimidating message to the rest of civil society and further erode public confidence in the impartiality and independence of the Salvadoran judicial system.
The Salvadoran state has intensified its attacks on civil society and the independent press through coordinated strategies in the legal, institutional, and media spheres to silence their work. It is extremely alarming that they are being persecuted under a prolonged state of exception that suspends fundamental rights and freedoms, a measure whose objective is to control organized crime gangs.
In a context of high concentration of power, the Foreign Agents Law was enacted, imposing severe restrictions on non-governmental organizations, including onerous registration requirements, a 30 percent tax on foreign funding, and broad powers to suspend their activities based on vague allegations of political activity. Together with the hostile rhetoric from senior officials led by President Bukele, these measures aim to delegitimize independent voices and restrict the legitimate activities of civil society organizations.
The persecution of defenders such as Ruth López and Enrique Anaya reflects a broader strategy to dismantle civic oversight and the rule of law, and to criminalize criticism and the defense of human rights. Other examples of criminalization include community leaders from La Floresta and the El Bosque cooperative, among them Fidel Zavala, Alejandro Henríquez, and Ángel Pérez, who have been detained during peaceful protests over land and evictions.
It is important to note that, throughout Nayib Bukele’s administration, dozens of human rights defenders, journalists, lawyers, former public officials, members of the political opposition, and businesspeople have been forced into exile outside the country. This trend, which is worrying in itself, has significantly increased in the last month, reflecting a growing climate of repression and persecution that severely restricts civic and democratic space in El Salvador.
The repression of civic space in El Salvador is taking place within a broader context of erosion of democratic institutions and the rule of law. As a result of the state of exception, more than 85,000 people have been detained without respect for basic due process guarantees, including the presumption of innocence and access to a fair and impartial trial, and in inhumane conditions of deprivation of liberty. Local organizations have documented at least 400 deaths of people in custody since the beginning of the exception regime.
We therefore call on the Salvadoran State to:
Immediately release lawyers Ruth López and Enrique Anaya, as well as all human rights defenders and community leaders who have been arbitrarily detained for political reasons; and respect due process guarantees, including the right to a public trial, in any proceedings against them.
Refrain from using pretrial detention as a form of advance punishment against human rights defenders and others detained for political reasons, in clear violation of due process guarantees and international human rights standards.
Protect human rights defenders from reprisals, harassment, torture, and threats, and ensure accountability for abuses committed.
Restore conditions that allow freedom of expression, association, and assembly, and harmonize national laws with El Salvador’s international obligations, including by repealing the Foreign Agents Law.
End the misuse and abuse of emergency measures and, in all cases, guarantee the right to a fair trial.
We also call on the international community, including the Organization of American States and the United Nations, to:
Urge the government of El Salvador to immediately cease the instrumentalization of the criminal justice system against human rights defenders or those who express criticism of the government.
Take urgent action, through diplomatic channels, assistance, and conditional cooperation, among other means, to protect civic space, the rule of law, democracy, and human rights in El Salvador.
Abogadas y Abogados para la Justicia y los Derechos Humanos (México)
Alianza Regional por la Libre Expresión e Información
Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos -APRODEH, Perú
Center for Gender & Refugee Studies (CGRS)
Centro de Documentación en Derechos Humanos “Segundo Montes Mozo SJ” (CSMM) / Ecuador
Centro por la Justicia y el Derecho Internacional (CEJIL)
Consultora Solidaria (Mexico)
Consultoría para los Derechos Humanos y el Desplazamiento – CODHES (Colombia).
Convergencia por los Derechos Humanos (CDH), Guatemala
Comité de Familiares de Víctimas de los Sucesos de Febrero y Marzo de 1989 (COFAVIC), Venezuela.
Due Process of Law Foundation (DPLF)
Equipo de Reflexión, Investigación y Comunicación (ERIC-SJ). Honduras
Global Strategic Litigation Council for Refugee Rights
Instituto de Defensa Legal (IDL), Peru
Latin America Working Group (LAWG)
Movimiento Autónomo de Mujeres
Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights
Synergía, iniciativas para los derechos humanos
Tejiendo Redes Infancia en América Latina y el Caribe
On 1 July 2025 DAWN issued a response to reports of a new Israeli directive to ban employees of DAWN, along with other respected human rights and legal advocacy organizations including Al-Haq Europe, Law for Palestine, and Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights (LPHR), from entering Israel, aiming to punish and suppress accountability efforts for war crimes, apartheid, and genocide, DAWN issues the following:
“Israel is now banning human rights organizations from even entering the country to expose and seek accountability for the atrocities and crimes it is committing,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, DAWN’s executive director. “Israel’s ban against organizations seeking accountability for IDF abuses is only the latest indication of its growing isolation in the international community.”
“Israel’s decision to blacklist DAWN is a desperate attempt to block scrutiny of its crimes against the Palestinian people,” said Raed Jarrar, advocacy director at DAWN. “We will not be intimidated by authoritarian tactics and will continue our work to expose Israel’s violations of international law until there is full accountability and justice.”
“It’s hard to imagine greater validation of DAWN’s work to hold accountable Israeli officials and soldiers than being banned from entering the country specifically because of that work,” said Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man, director for Israel-Palestine at DAWN. “This is nevertheless a worrying harbinger of even greater Israeli repression of human rights defenders, be they Palestinian, Israeli, or American.”
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.
On 30 June 2025, ISHR launched its updated Reprisals Handbook in four languages (English, Simplified Chinese, Uyghur and Tibetan), an essential resource for all stakeholders concerned about intimidation and reprisals against those cooperating with international or regional human rights systems.
The UN as well as regional human rights bodies are often the last space where human rights defenders, rights holders, victims and witnesses can denounce violations and abuses. They must be free and safe to cooperate with and give evidence and testimony to these human rights bodies. They must be protected against any form of intimidation or reprisal in association with this engagement.
This handbook is aimed first and foremost at human rights defenders who engage with regional and international human rights systems. The focus is in particular on the United Nations (UN) human rights system, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).
The handbook highlights the risks that defenders can face from interacting with those systems, and suggests ways in which defenders can leverage the weight of the UN and regional human rights mechanisms to provide some degree of protection against those risks. In doing so, it does not aim to provide a fully comprehensive protection solution. In all cases, defenders should consider which option might be best, based on the context and particulars of a case.
ISHR also aims at diversifying the formats available for defenders to access relevant content, including by publishing a Reprisals Toolkit and a video in the languages mentioned above.
The International Service for Human Rights (ISHR) seeks to ensure that national, international and regional human rights systems have the policies, mechanisms and protocols in place to prevent reprisals and ensure accountability where they occur. ISHR also brings cases of alleged intimidation and reprisals to the attention of relevant officials to press for effective preventative measures and responses, including through our #EndReprisals campaigns. ISHR also maintains the #EndReprisals database, which documents cases of reprisals reported by the UN Secretary-General.
For more information on how to use the UN bodies and mechanisms referred to throughout this handbook, visit the ISHR Academy, which provides free courses in English, Spanish and French.
In 2024, HURIDOCS continued strengthening partnerships, evolving tools, and expanding its reach.
“I see our contribution not just as code, but as something living—like the root bridges of Northeast India, grown with care and shaped by community. This is how I envision HURIDOCS: building human rights infrastructure that is resilient, collaborative, and deeply rooted in justice.” — Danna Ingleton, HURIDOCS Executive Director
Supporting the global community
This year, HURIDOCS partnered with 73 organisations across 38 countries, helping develop documentation strategies, launch new platforms, and provide targeted support. This means 73 documentation projects were reimagined and refined through bespoke customisation through our flagship tool, Uwazi. From databases mapping attacks on environmental defenders to resources preserving collective memory, our work continues to be shaped by those on the frontlines of human rights struggles.
Uwazi: Built with and for civil society
In 2024, our open-source platform, Uwazi, continued to grow with new machine learning tools for translation and metadata extraction, tighter security, and full integration with the Tella mobile app, making it more responsive, secure, and aligned with the needs of human rights defenders worldwide.
Convening global conversations
In 2024, HURIDOCS engaged in key global events, including a side event at the 56th Human Rights Council, the Geneva Human Rights Platform, the first Google Impact Summit, and a Human Rights Day webinar highlighting four global initiatives powered by Uwazi.
Through these events, we advanced vital discussions on the ethical use of AI, digital monitoring technologies, and the future of technology infrastructure in support of human rights.
Navigating fundraising challenges while building resilience and sustainability
HURIDOCS continued to navigate a complex funding landscape in 2024, strengthening our financial foundations to ensure long-term resilience.
We remain committed to aligning our resource strategies with our mission, providing steadfast support, insight, and partnership to those advancing human rights globally
Strengthening our foundations
2024 marked the second year of Danna Ingleton’s leadership as Executive Director. It was a year of growth and transition, including the appointment of Grace Kwak Danciu as Chair of the HURIDOCS Board, and a heartfelt farewell to Lisa Reinsberg, whose contributions shaped the organisation for more than five years.
To ensure the long-term sustainability of our mission, we launched a new Development and Communications team under the leadership of Yolanda Booyzen. We also welcomed new staff across programmes, tech, and product, each one contributing to a stronger, more agile HURIDOCS.
As our team grows and our documentation tools evolve, we strive to build a fit-for-purpose civil society equipped to achieve justice, accountability, and the protection of human rights.
Looking ahead, we hold hope that the years to come will bring renewed compassion as we work towards a world where human rights are upheld for all.
Annual meeting of the Tripartite Partnership to Support National Human Rights Institutions UNDP
In the face of democratic backsliding, shrinking civic space and complex global crises, national human rights institutions (NHRIs) stand as vital defenders on the frontlines of human rights protection. On 18-19 June, UNDP, UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR), the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions (GANHRI), NHRIs and their regional and global networks, as well as international partners convened to reflect on challenges NHRIs encounter in their daily work and to chart a strategic path forward.
“National human rights institutions are a cornerstone of any democratic system. When properly supported, they help prevent violations, close accountability gaps, and bring the voices of the most marginalized to the forefront,” said Dr. Ammar Dwaik, Director General, Independent Commission for Human Rights in Palestine.
The Tri-Partite Partnership (TPP) to Support NHRIs, a strategic collaboration between UNDP, OHCHR and GANHRI, has played a catalytic role in strengthening NHRIs in 15 countries. Through this partnership, NHRIs have enhanced their capacity, increased visibility and improved outreach to deliver services to marginalized or remote communities, as well as to support people amidst conflict, hostilities or post-crises. Compelling stories of institutional transformation were shared from the State of Palestine, Timor-Leste and Ukraine.
The TPP has also empowered NHRIs to respond more effectively to urgent challenges, including the impacts of climate change and the digital divide. Innovative practices encompass the use of a real-time Human Rights Dashboard in Nigeria and the development of a digital platform to enhance public engagement in Costa Rica. “We have seen how investments in digital systems are improving institutional quality and deepening human rights impact,” said Turhan Saleh, Deputy Director, UNDP Crisis Bureau.
Discussions on environmental rights and climate justice highlighted experiences from Ecuador, Georgia and North Macedonia, demonstrating how NHRIs supported environmental defenders and helped integrate human rights into national climate responses.
“We see a direct link between access to environmental justice and the protection of communities’ rights – especially those on the frontlines of climate impacts. Our role has been to amplify these voices and ensure that environmental policy is grounded in human rights,” said Tamar Gvaramadze, First Deputy Public Defender of Georgia.
The TPP Annual Meeting re-affirmed the UN system’s continued commitment to empowering NHRIs as independent, effective, and resilient institutions – essential for upholding human rights, democracy, peace, and sustainable development worldwide.
On 1 July 2025, Raphael Hoetmer and Sofia Jarrín in Amazon Watch report on the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, staying that governments and UNODC must include Indigenous Peoples in anti-crime and environmental policies
For Indigenous communities, these expanding criminal economies mean more than environmental degradation. They are direct assaults on their lives, health, and sovereignty. Illegal activities such as logging, mining, and coca production for international markets contaminate rivers with mercury, destroy food sources, deteriorate health, and displace communities from their ancestral lands. These burgeoning criminal markets, coupled with weak or complicit state institutions, have led Indigenous leaders to warn that criminal groups are increasingly taking over local government structures and exerting territorial control.
This deepening crisis makes the Amazon one of the most dangerous places in the world for environmental defenders. Indigenous organizations often face these threats alone, without adequate support from governments or international institutions. As Indigenous Peoples themselves underscore, these violent criminal economies kill leaders, recruit their youth, and spread fear through their communities…
This year a delegation of Amazonian Indigenous leaders delivered a clear and urgent message: organized crime and illegal economies are devastating the Amazon and threatening the survival of Indigenous Peoples. They called on the Forum to include strong recommendations urging the international community and governments to step up their efforts to support Indigenous territorial governance, protect human rights defenders, and ensure Indigenous Peoples are included in shaping policies to prevent and contain organized crime.
“The Permanent Forum must formally recognize that organized crime and illegal economies such as drug trafficking and illegal mining are an existential threat to our peoples. We must be included in drafting the international protocol on environmental crimes, and protection mechanisms for Indigenous defenders must be created, along with funding for Indigenous-led economic alternatives. If these measures are not taken, ongoing military and police interventions in our territories will continue to put our lives at risk. Without dignified livelihoods, we cannot safeguard our culture or our territories.”
The Permanent Forum’s conclusions this year directly responded to these urgent appeals. Its final document, published earlier this month, presents a wide range of concerns, recommendations, and proposals related to the implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, with this session explicitly addressing the impacts and expansion of criminal economies.
In conclusion 87 of the document, the Forum urges governments and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) – the leading global institution on anti-crime policies – to integrate Indigenous Peoples meaningfully into the design and implementation of anti-crime and security strategies. This recommendation is particularly relevant in the ongoing process to discuss a new Protocol Against Crimes that Affect the Environment, which must include the voices of Indigenous Peoples – as the principal stewards of global biodiversity and primary victims of the violence tied to these crimes.
The Forum’s conclusions also emphasize the urgent need for the international community and governments to:
take necessary measures to ensure the rights, protection, and safety of Indigenous leaders and human rights defenders,
end impunity and prosecute those who commit violence against Indigenous Peoples,
acknowledge and protect Indigenous women and children from the disproportionate impacts of war and violence on their lives,
ensure Indigenous participation in peace negotiations and peace-building processes,
assess the impacts of mercury on the health, culture, and livelihoods of Indigenous Peoples under the Minamata Convention,
and repair the damage from toxic metals on Indigenous lands and territories, including restoring sites and water sources, with special attention to the severe impact on the health of Indigenous women and children.
Jasmin Lorch in an article of 25 June 2025 argues that European support to human rights NGOs, critical civil society and free media is not merely a “nice-to-have“. Instead, it directly serves European interests due to the important information function that these civil society actors perform.
USAID funding cuts have dealt a heavy blow to human rights defenders, critical Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and independent media outlets around the globe. While the damage is hard to quantify exactly, it is clearly huge. For instance, the Centre for Human Rights and Democracy at People in Need estimates that the human rights and media organizations it supports have seen their budgets shrink by 40 to 100% because of the cuts. Based on a USAID fact sheet, meanwhile taken offline, Reporters without Borders (RSF) informed that the dismantling of USAID had affected support to 6,200 journalists, 707 non-state media outlets and 279 civil society organizations (CSOs) working to support free media. The impacts on local civil society are especially pronounced in closed authoritarian contexts where CSOs are both restricted and donor-dependent. In Cambodia, ADHOC, one of the few remaining local human rights organizations, lost 74 percent of its budget and had to close 16 out of its 22 provincial offices.
As critical CSOs and independent media outlets struggle to find alternative sources of funding, they face another threat to their survival: Major European donors, including Sweden, have cut down on foreign funding as well, citing their own national needs, including the necessity to invest more in defence. Germany, the biggest bilateral donor since the dismantling of USAID, has recently pledged to better integrate its foreign, defence, and development policy and to more closely align development cooperation with its security and economic interests. Accordingly, there is a significant risk that European donors will (further) cut down on funding for critical CSOs and free media as well.
However, European donors should consider that continuing to support human rights defenders, critical NGOs and independent media outlets is in their own interest.
Notably, these civil society actors serve an important information function. By furnishing insights into human rights abuses, governance deficits and patterns of corruption, they provide European (as well as other) governments with a better understanding of political developments, power relations and regime dynamics in their partner countries, thereby enhancing the predictability of security and economic partnerships. Authoritarian governments. in particular, restrict the free flow of information, while, concurrently, engaging in propaganda and, at times, strategic disinformation. Consequently, European foreign, economic and security policy towards these governments routinely suffers from severe information deficits, including the existence of numerous “unknown unknowns”. To compensate for this weakness, country assessments and expert opinions used by foreign, development, and defence ministries in Europe to devise policy approaches towards non-democratic partner countries often include information provided by independent media outlets, human rights or anti-corruption NGOs. Similarly, European embassies in authoritarian countries frequently draw on the reports and documentations accomplished by local human rights NGOs.
In some cases, the information provided by critical NGOs, human rights defenders and independent media outlets – both local and transnational – is highly economically and security relevant, for instance when it serves to unearth patterns of transnational crime. The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), an investigative journalist network, which also has a media development branch and was heavily affected by the USAID funding cuts, for instance, contributed to the Panama Papers that disclosed the secretive use of offshore tax havens. A recent report named Policies and Patterns. State-Abetted Transnational Crime in Cambodia as a Global Security Threat draws on interviews with journalists and civil society representatives. While expressing disappointment with the ineffectiveness of large parts of the aid community and big counter-trafficking NGOs in addressing the problem, it emphasizes that
“the ‘local civil society’ community — grassroots volunteer response networks, human rights defenders, and independent media —have been and remain the lynchpin of an embattled response. These heavily repressed and poorly funded groups have been and remain the primary source of available evidence on the lead perpetrators, their networks, and their modes of operation” (quote on p.3).
Last but not least, establishing partnerships with human rights defenders and critical NGOs also allows European countries to expand their social and political alliances in their partner countries, a diversification that can be highly useful in times of political uncertainty and change. ..
Support to human rights NGOs, other critical CSOs and free media constitutes an important contribution to democracy and pluralism. However, it also benefits European economic and security interests by enhancing the knowledge base on which European governments can draw when constructing their international alliances. European governments already use the information provided by these civil society actors in various ways, so they should continue providing diplomatic support, solidarity, and resources to them. Moreover, partnerships with human rights, media, and other civil society representatives provide European governments with an important possibility to diversify their international partnerships.
Against this backdrop, European support to these civil society actors is not a “nice-to-have” that can easily be dispensed with when funding gets more scarce. It is an important element in ensuring the predictability and reliability of European foreign relations.
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 