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and the nominees are……

March 16, 2010

On 13 March 2010, Eric Sottas, the long-standing repesentative of the World Organisation Against Torture, one of the 10 NGOs on the Jury of the Martin Ennals Award, announced the names of the four nominees of the Martin Ennals Award 2010. He did this during the closing of the International Film Festival on Human Rights in Geneva:

 Mr. Wan Yanhai (China)

Ms Aida Quilcué (Colombia)

Mr. Daniel Bekele (Ethiopia)

Mr. Muhannad Al Hassani (Syria)

Eric gave a marvellous little speech in which he dug into the thorny question of how to define a Human Rights Defender (HRD) and the increasing difficulties HRDs face in their work. I am trying to get hold of his speaking notes…

Hans Thoolen

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more on what this blog will be about

March 15, 2010

I do not intend to duplicate the excellent work being done by a variety of organisations for the benefit of individual human rights defenders such as,  just to mention a few: Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Observatory for Human Rights Defenders (run by FIDH and OMCT), Human Rights First or Frontline).  If there is something urgent in an individual case of a Human Rights Defender (HRD) in distress, I would obviously pass it on. I will also not hesitate to refer to a particularly significant initiative or action by any NGO or IGO. But the main purpose of the blog is to reflect on the problems of human rights defenders in general and the response by the international community to their needs. Questions such as:

– is there a proper and operational definition of who is a HRD? 

– does publicity (e.g. from awards) help or hinder HRDs?;

– does the totality of support efforts cover adequately the rea needs of HRDs?;

– to what extent is the ‘competition’ between NGOs with mandates for the protection of HRDs more harmful than helpful?;  

– are the new information technologies and media sufficiently used by HRDs (and if not why and how could it be changed)?

– and of course any other such issues that come my way thanks to the responses to this post,

a bit clearer now why I started this blog effort? best regards

Hans Thoolen

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a new blog about Human Rights Defenders

March 12, 2010

hansthoolen Says:

March 12, 2010 at 1:53 pm | Reply edit
A short introduction
There is nowadays so much happening around the theme of human rights defenders (shorthand HRDs) that on the one hand there is no need to have yet another source of information, while on the other I feel that I am in such a privileged position that not sharing some of the information that comes my way would be a disservice to the human rights movement. A worldwide movement that has been my ‘home’ for most of my life. It started with the anti-apartheid movement and the Netherlands Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (NJCM) in the 70s and via the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), the Netherlands Institute for Human Rights (SIM) and HURIDOCS, it ended with 15 years in the United Nations, mostly the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and one year at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). After early retirement and a move to Greece, there was more time to specialise in human rights defenders, through the MEA (Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders – http://www.martinennalsaward.org) and THF (True Heroes Foundation, films for HRDs – http://www.trueheroesfilms.org) and do teaching and traning, mostly through the Raoul Wallenberg Institute in Lund. So, now you have some idea of my background and I can start thinking about more substantive matters for future blogs, best Hans Thoolen

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