Protection International, ProtectDefenders.eu and the Centre for Applied Human Rights of the University of York have been promoting a Human Rights Defenders Poetry Challenge:
This poetry challenge is for all activists and artists irrespective of previous experience with this form of art. As the global pandemic continues, we’d like to encourage those that work in support of human rights to take a moment to reflect on the past year, take a break from the current context in which we are situated and ponder about where we should be go from here.
We are accepting poetry of all styles (haiku, slam poems, free verse, limericks, etc.) and multimedia submissions are also welcome. Poems can be submitted in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Swahili and Thai, and the top poems in each language will be published in a digital booklet. The top three poems overall will win a cash prize, the authors be granted free access to our e-learning course on preventative protection and security and they will also be invited to a virtual poetry reading with key stakeholders and celebrity guests. The Poetry Challenge is completely free to participate, with no submission or entry fees.
On 13 June 2021 Daiana Andreea Nagy Deac wrote about Memorial to Human Rights Defenders which is an art piece situated in The Iveagh Gardens. This monument was inaugurated by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Simon Coveney, to commemorate the lives of those people whose voices have been silenced for defending human rights.
Shwe writes that it “is a hidden gem in Dublin and a must-see for art lovers, ..was designed by the international architecture studio Grafton Architects. The Memorial to Human Rights Defenders can impact the viewer not only for the strength of its message but also for the level of detail and hidden symbolism in its artistic execution. This work is built in the shape of a walk-in room surrounded by a metal screen, which I think has an enveloping effect because the viewer not only admires the art piece from the outside but has to enter it to observe it in its entirety. On the metal screen, different plaques treasure the last words of some heroes and heroines who lost their lives fighting for human rights.“
Another curious detail of this monument is that in the middle we find five upright stones engraved with Ogham script, which is the written interpretation of primitive Irish, the oldest form of the Irish language. The plates containing the words of the human rights defenders are also written in Irish as well as English, so I think that in addition to offering an important message, The Memorial to Human Rights Defenders also celebrates Irish culture.
The future of human rights must be hopeful.When we only show the abuses, people start to believe that we live in a world of crisis with no alternative. We believe that the image of human rights needs to be reimagined so we can bring more people on board.
Reimagining Human Rights is a project by Fine Acts, in partnership with hope-based comms. We are building the largest collection of free, evergreen, hopeful visual content around human rights, for activists and nonprofits around the world to use in their campaigns.
We commissioned a selection of amazing artists from around the world. We also opened a call for existing works to creatives everywhere. We received close to 1000 illustrations (THANK YOU) from the global creative community, and selected to feature over 100 (and counting). See all the powerful and uplifting illustrations below and enjoy new works every week until January 2021. Below a few examples of the many beautiful illustrations.
The success of ‘Art For Resistance: Quilts Of Women Human Rights Defenders’ was a wake up call to do everything in our power to protect the human rights of women. (Photos courtesy of Protection International)
Under the title “The blanket that protects” Yvonne Bohwongprasert in the Bangkok Post of 19 February 2020 writes about these quilts as an art form to address human rights and encourage society to stand up and collectively fight for a social cause that impacts people from all walks of life.
“Art For Resistance: Quilts Of Women Human Rights Defenders” was one such event with a powerful social message: “Have I done anything today to protect the rights of women?” The social-awareness event, which was launched in 2018, had a record 54 participants — two of whom happened to be men — sharing their personal stories of fighting for human rights in various sectors of society on colourful quilts they stitched together on their own. Besides the exhibition, there was a panel discussion on the situation of women human-rights defenders in a pseudo-democratic Thailand.
The idea of quilts to raise awareness on the issue came from the colourful quilt squares Chilean women used to tell their stories of life under the Pinochet dictatorship, which routinely violated human rights. Despite the lives of these women having been darkened by poverty and oppression, their vibrant and visually captivating denouncements were a strong tool of resistance. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arpilleras/
Protection International (PI) Thailand and the Canadian embassy in Thailand, played a vital role in staging this year’s event. PI representative Pranom Somwong said: “Each quilt tells a story of injustice and the fire in each woman to overcome her struggles by acquiring a relentless spirit to seek justice for their families and communities“.
A quilt inspired by Buku FC, a Deep South female football club made largely of Muslim women and a few men and LGBT individuals. Rumman Waeteh, left, and Suhaida Kutha, right, created the work. YVONNE BOHWONGPRASERT
The blue graffiti reads: “Oh, my wonderful country.” Photo by Nohad Elhajj.
Since the 17th of October 2019, Lebanon has been in the grips of widespread public protests against the social, economic, and political conditions of the country. The protesters are holding the government accountable for degrading living conditions and demanding serious and drastic changes. ….. But something, equally alive, captivates the place: graffiti. Building walls, stone barriers, wooden panels, even the asphalt ground are all covered with graffiti. With their diverse slogans, creative motifs, and direct, uncensored political and social messages, the graffiti artists collectively illustrate the people’s discourse demanding a full-fledged social and political reform.
On 23 January 2020 Nohad Elhajj – a development practitioner and independent researcher – wrote an interesting piece on this aspect in Global Rights, with rich illustrations:
Graffiti is defined as “a form of visual communication, usually illegal, involving the unauthorized marking of public space by an individual or group”. The definition by itself poses a duality; would unauthorized marking of public space become positive communication? Would it possibly shift perspectives? Maybe not all, but some graffiti certainly does convey political messages. The question here is not about authority per se but the disruption of this authority. The act itself is intrinsically disruptive and political whether graffiti is acceptable or not. Starting from this understanding, graffiti, as a visual act, then can be leveraged as a participatory and accessible medium to shift public perspectives on human rights issues. Yet, the human rights movement does not only need to shift the public opinion but also to shift the current governance structures, which is beyond the impact of graffiti. The graffiti in Riyad El Soloh Square is a good illustration of this.
Graffiti is not new to the Lebanese society, but revolution graffiti is particular and powerful because of its relevance, the messages it conveys, and the places it occupies to convey these messages. The graffiti artists practiced their right to freedom of expression, of peaceful assembly and association, while communicating, directly and clearly, human rights demands from women rights, LGBTQ rights, economic and social rights to civil and political rights. (Shown in Pictures below).
…… The Lebanese graffiti artists have pushed and merged both boundaries of political participation and art. The graffiti imposes itself on the observer and on the spaces it occupies with wit and audacity. It overwhelms the observer with emotions of anger, despair, longing and revolt but also with hope. Much of this street art offers a thought-provoking mosaic of entangled messages and images. The graffiti above shows a white pigeon (a recurring image) combined with a strong slogan about workers’ rights; this combination conveys that those rights, and other demands, will be achieved in the future.
Similar to that, the graffiti at the beginning of this article offers another perplexing combination. The whole piece can be read as: “Oh my wonderful country, sectarianism burned us”. As much as it articulates a cry of despair with hurt and agony, it also retains the image of a wonderful country before civil war and a political system that has crippled it for the past 45 years. The generation who lived the war is still lamenting it and the following generations were still living in the resulting divisions and sectarianism—up until the 17th of October 2019. Akin to the protests, the graffiti captured a future hope of a country that will regain its glory after necessary social and political change.
The artists’ urge to mark every visible surface around Riad El Soloh square with spray paint and brushes placed them right in the middle of an already contested political and social scene, and it placed the rights discourse in the middle and around this scene. This graffiti proved to be a strong visual expression of all the protesters’ demands and a way to engage the public with it, both inside and outside Lebanon. Through their paint, these graffiti artists created a distinctive, unprecedented, and positive narrative about human rights in Lebanon: a narrative that more and more organizations and activists are now hanging onto.
Human rights organisation Amnesty International Indonesia has launched a campaign to spread awareness about how a single signature can make a big contribution to ending human rights violations.
According to a press release, it has partnered Grey Indonesia to produce a series of posters that utilise the simplicity of single line illustrations to visually communicate the strength of signatures. The series highlight three human rights issues that “really matter” to Indonesia’s millennial segment – child marriage, gender-related persecution, and the suppression of freedom of expression.
“We at Amnesty International have witnessed how signatures can change people’s lives all over the world. With this campaign, we are hoping that Indonesian youth will recognise its power and start to take action for human rights,” said Sadika Hamid, Amnesty International Indonesia communications manager.
The posters are situated in the Amnesty International office and its immediate vicinity (Menteng, which is a popular hangout spot amongst the youth). They will also be placed near other touch points and locales familiar to Indonesian millennials, such as trains stations, art galleries and coffee shops, over the next few weeks.
Grey Indonesia ECD Patrick Miciano said: “Grey Indonesia believes in what Amnesty International stands for. It is a humbling experience to be able to collaborate with one the world’s biggest defenders of human rights.”
On Mark Westall reports in Fadmagazine that the Belgian artist Koen Vanmechelen has launched a Human Rights Pavilion at Venice.
Coinciding with the 58th Venice Bienniale, Belgian artist Koen Vanmechelen has launched the evolving artwork Human Rights Pavilion. In 2021, he will present his completed Opus to the Venice Biennial authorities with a request for a recurring, international human rights pavilion. Koen Vanmechelen firmly believes that art has a role to play in the current debate about human rights, a controversial issue highlighted by globalisation. Are human rights culturally relative? Does the human rights project have limits? Is the existing Universal Declaration on Human Rights outdated and Western- centered, as some claim?
To answer these questions, together with international partners Global Campus of Human Rights, Fondazione Berengo and the MOUTH Foundation, the Belgian artist launches the Human Rights Pavilion. This ambitious project was initiated on the island of Murano, in parallel with the 58th Venice Biennial. Over the next two years, the evolving work will gain weight and momentum through the dialogues, travels, correspondence, explorations and creations of Vanmechelen during a world tour. The evolving pavilion-to-be should gain form through contact with people and organizations involved or interested in human rights. The focal point is Vanmechelen’s adage ‘the global only exists through the generosity of the local.’
Vanmechelen: ‘Through my longstanding work around children’s and nature rights, I learned that connecting to others is vital. Underlying the philosophy that unifies my work is ‘every organism needs another organism to survive.’ Survival depends on the survival of the other or SoTO. The Human Rights Pavilion comes together in three chapters: SoTO Dialogues, SoTO Environment and SoTO Legacy. Different partners are invited to contribute to both the artistic research and the development of the artwork, aiming to include as many disciplines, perspectives, and cultures in the creation. At the end of 2020, all inputs will be reworked into a unifying OPUS. This collective memory of our moment in time and space, will be presented to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the European Commission and the President and Curator of the 59th Venice Biennale of Art. It will be accompanied by a call to establish a recurrent supra-national Human Rights Pavilion as part of the structure of the Venice Biennial.More Info: www.humanrightspavilion.com
REBECCA ELLIS published a profile of Marini de Livera under the title “She’s A Lawyer … A Thespian … And Now A State Department ‘Woman Of Courage‘”
Marini de Livera’s plays are not for the faint of heart. In her home country of Sri Lanka, the pro bono lawyer has found that crimes against women and children often take place behind closed doors — in homes, orphanages and schools. With her traveling theater group, de Livera seeks to shed light on the human rights abuses in her country by putting the violence on stage, front and center. “There are beautiful laws in the law books,” she says. “But when I went out to the slums, to the rural areas, to conflict-ridden areas, I found what is in the law books is not a practical reality.”
De Livera has served as the chairperson of Sri Lanka’s child welfare agency, the National Child Protection Authority, and now runs Sisters at Law, an advocacy group for impoverished women and children. She spoke with NPR about her creative approach to addressing human rights in her country, and why she’s focusing on using her theater training to better the situation of children in Sri Lanka’s orphanages.
What are some of the legal issues that women and children in Sri Lanka need help with?
Women and children are denied justice if they’re uneducated, and if they live in rural areas. They don’t enjoy the same basket of human rights that privileged people have because they don’t have access to lawyers.
What needs to happen to accomplish that?
There has to be legal literacy. These women and children have to know what the laws in the country are and what their human rights are. If they are educated about their rights, they can go to court and demand them.
You’ve often used theater to promote this legal literacy in Sri Lanka. Can you give me an example of how this works?
One of my favorite plays I put on was about corporal punishment. I went to a Catholic school where a priest was hitting boys every day. I explained to the school that there are different forms of violence – cultural violence, psychological violence, physical violence. Then I asked the boys to make a play about their experiences with violence. And one of the boys reenacted what the priest had done to him. [It helped] these boys find an outlet to say, “We don’t want to kneel down when we come late to school. We don’t want to be beaten by a cane.”
How did you come to see theater as a way to educate the public on their legal rights?
I had been a lecturer in law [in Sri Lanka], and one of the things I had to teach was U.K. law principles. And the students were bored to death. So I said, these are the books, you read, then you tell me what the rule of law and separation of powers are through a performance. I realized if I could use this in the classroom, why not in the village to simplify the law?
What is your theater group working on now?
I’m working on a street theater [program] to create awareness for parents [and encourage them] not to send their children to orphanages. I’m going to show that family is the place for the child. In Sri Lanka, we have a lot of “social orphans” where they have both parents, but the children are suffering in orphanages.
Past reports have found that over 80 percent of the 20,000 children in Sri Lanka’s child-care institutions, including orphanages, have at least one parent. These parents are often unable to provide for their children or the child has a disability and requires extra care. And sometimes the children are sent to such an institution because of a criminal offense.
Orphanages should be the last resort. So I’m promoting alternative care. Some of the mothers are capable of looking after their children, but they’ve handed over their child to an overcrowded orphanage. I’m thinking of giving parenting skills training to these mothers and economically empowering them, finding them a nice home and settling the children with them.
You mentioned earlier that this prize is the first time in your life you felt appreciated for “walking in the opposite direction” from others in the law profession. Do you have hopes other attorneys will follow in your path?
I’m very unhappy to say each time I go to court people come up to me like a swarm of flies and say, “We don’t have a lawyer to appear on behalf of us.” I want to take all the country’s young attorneys and train them to be another Marini – to clone myself. Because I have to hand this on to the younger generation.
The German NGO Wahrheitskämper (TruthFighters) and Amnesty International set up a bus stall at the International Frankfurt book fair every year to educate people about threats to freedom of expression. Different sketch artists pay tribute to courageous human rights defenders.
In 2018 the stall included portraits of Shaheed Salmaan Taseer, the late publisher of Daily Times of Pakistan, made by the German artist Steff Murschetz. Illustrator from Oberursel Christine Krahe painted the portrait of the Turkish author Ahmet Altan, who is imprisoned since 2016. Susanne Köhler, a Frankfurt based illustrator and initiator of the memorial project Wahrheitskämpfer – Fighters for Truth – drew the portrait of the Journalist Kyaw Soe Oo who is imprisoned in Myanmar. Christian Scharfenberg also made a portrait of slain US journalist John McNamara, who was killed in a mass shooting at The Capital Gazette newspaper in June 2018. Deniz Yucel was imprisoned by Turkish government in February 2017 for almost a year while serving as a correspondent for Germany’s Die WeltN24 media group in Turkey.
Artist Steff Murschetz from U-Comix-Magazin drew a sketch of Salmaan Taseer Shaheed
Speaking to Daily Times, Steff Murschetz said that Salmaan Taseer’s sketch was his way of conveying his love and respect for the visionary man who gave up his life while protecting Pakistani society from intolerance and injustice. Known German lawyer of Pakistani origin Advocate Muzaffar Chaudhry also joined the Amnesty International event and told Daily Times that the Supreme Court’s decision in Aasia Bibi’s case was a recognition of Salmaan Taseer’s clarity of vision.
We Are Human Rights is a project spearheaded by Dutch designer Bernhard Lenger. He paired seven designers with human rights defenders from around the world and asked them to work together to develop tools for change. The results, which were showcased in an exhibition for Dutch Design Week 2o18, tackled issues ranging from illegal settlements in Nicaragua to the criminalisation of homosexuality in Burundi. Lenger first launched We Are Human Rights at Dutch Design Week in 2017. In an interview with Dezeen at the time, he said that designers can’t solve real-world problems on their own. “We are only a small cogwheel in an enormous machine,” he said.
“We are investigating new opportunities for design, to identify where designers can play an important role in our world,” said Lenger. “With these seven projects we are showing a variety of how design and international topics can come together, but also want to invite governments and private organisations to work together with us,” .
Each team was given three months to devise a solution to one particular issue.
The first project, How I Became an Ally from Not Giving a Shit, is by Rotterdam-based designer Daeun Lim. It is a digital platform that connects those who are interested in human rights activism in Kenya.
Dauen Lim’s project is a digital platform that connects those who are interested in human rights activism in Kenya
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Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 