The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is accepting applications for the Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize 2024 to honour a person, organization or institution that has made an outstanding contribution to the defence and, or promotion of press freedom anywhere in the world, and especially when this has been achieved in the face of danger. Deadline: 15 February 2024
For those who missed last this year’s #RightLivelihood Award Presentation on Wednesday 29 November 2023. It puts a spotlight on the importance of reconnecting to nature and our communities, calling for the systems that unite us to be built on trust and cooperation rather than suspicion and greed. For the winners, see: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2023/09/29/right-livelihood-awards-2023/
On 29 December 2023 Akram Miknas posted a piece on gdnonline attacking the Nobel Peace Prize. It is not my role to “defend” the Peace Prize, but the misconception underlying much of the piece is such that it is worth putting the record straight:
“Wish it were feasible to revoke the Nobel Peace Prize! Especially when some individuals upon whom this supreme honour is bestowed, show, by their subsequent actions and behaviour, that they are more suited to a ‘prize’ or ‘badge’ of shame associated with war and destruction or violence and bloodshed“
The author then raises the cases of Menachem Begin, Shimon Peres, and Aung San Suu Kyi, who are seen as violators. He could have added others such as Le Duc Tho, de Klerk, Arafat and Kissinger or more recently Abiy Ahmed Ali.
…”These examples make us question the logic of bestowing the Nobel on individuals or groups for peace, when their actions are anything but peaceful! In fact, after having received this honour, they have been involved in terrible acts that have stained them with the blood of their victims.”
…..Indeed, many of these Nobel Peace Prize laureates, are, in reality, perpetrators of war crimes. As far back as 2012 I published a piece ‘Nobel Prize is for Peace not necessarily Human Rights‘ which states that the Prize is a PEACE prize and was in certain cases awarded ‘merely’ because they stopped violating human rights. See: https://www.comminit.com/content/nobel-prize-peace-not-necessarily-human-rights
The author makes the sensible point of asking for a critical reassessment of the award selection process: “One key criterion should be that recipients must refrain from intertwining human rights advocacy with political activities. Failure to adhere to this condition should warrant the withdrawal of the award in the future. This measure ensures that the accolade is granted solely based on an individual’s commitment to human rights without any influence from political affiliations or perspectives.”
The author’s call to “to establish alternative awards that are …specifically designed to champion the causes of the vulnerable. It should recognise individuals who are committed to tirelessly working for peace, justice and the promotion of humane values within societies. These awards should gain appreciation and support from individuals and organisations dedicated to fostering positive change in oppressed communities.” is fine but hardly necessary as there are at least 200 such awards, see: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest.
It is a pleasure to join you to honour the achievements of human rights defenders across the globe. Three quarters of a century ago, in a world decimated by war, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed that: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights”.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a clarion call to act in accordance with a fundamental truth: that each of us is an equal member of a single human family.
Seventy-five years on, the world must recall that wisdom. And it must act on it. Because human rights are under attack around the world. Conflicts are raging, with appalling consequences for civilians as we are dramatically witnessing every single day with immense death and suffering in Gaza after the horrors of the 7 October attacks. Inequalities are deepening. Hunger and poverty are rising. Women’s rights are stalling, and in some cases, going into reverse. Civic space and media freedom is being rolled back.
New threats are blossoming – from catastrophic climate disasters, to artificial intelligence, which holds the potential for immense possibility, but also for immense peril. And age-old hatreds are resurging with a vengeance – from racism, to xenophobia, and religious intolerance. People are being violently targeted solely for their religion, their ethnicity or who they love.
But across the world, human rights defenders are lights in the darkness.
They are changing lives:
Fighting, educating, and holding power to account, to make human rights a living, breathing reality. This is deeply dangerous work. Last year, almost 450 human rights defenders, journalists and trade unionists were killed. Forty percent more than the previous year. Thirty-three vanished without a trace – a staggering three hundred percent increase from 2021.
In this context, today’s Human Rights Prize is all the more important. This prize has recognized the achievements of human rights defenders since 1968. It has honored luminaries such as Nelson Mandela, Malala Yusafzai and the International Committee of the Red Cross. See: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/awards/74A3B502-F3DF-4DDB-8D6F-672C03B4A008.
Julienne Lusenge from the Democratic Republic of the Congo;
Julio Pereyra from Uruguay;
The Amman Center for Human Rights Studies;
The Human Rights Center “Viasna”, working in Belarus;
And the Global Coalition of civil society organizations, Indigenous Peoples, social movements and local communities for “the universal recognition of the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment”.
Congratulations to you all. And thank you for everything you are doing. I would also like to pay tribute tonight to the thousands of unsung human rights defenders around the world.
Leaders of all kinds must take inspiration from you – our prize recipients today –and defend all human rights – political, civil, social, economic, and cultural.
The world needs leaders of countries, corporations, political parties, religious and civil organizations and beyond, to speak out against antisemitism, anti-Muslim bigotry, attacks on minority Christian communities, and all forms of hate and abuse. It needs them to protect human rights defenders, and bring those who threaten them to justice.
It needs them to embrace our common norms and values, to act on them, and be guided by the spirit of humanity and dignity embodied by the Universal Declaration – to prevent conflict, protect the planet and heal divides.
And to place human rights at the front and centre of efforts to update our international institutions at the Summit of the Future next September.
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As we celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we need leaders of all kinds to embrace their role as human rights defenders too.
On 14 December 2023, the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that the 2023 Human Rights Tulip has been awarded to Hülya Gülbahar, a feminist attorney from Türkiye and founder of the Equality Watch Women’s Group (EŞİTİZ) and the Women’s Platform for Equality Türkiye (EŞİK). Minister of Foreign Affairs Hanke Bruins Slot presented the prize on 14 December at a ceremony in the Peace Palace.
In her speech, Ms Bruins Slot said: ‘Human rights are among the most important resources we have at our disposal to tackle the major problems of our time, such as war, poverty and climate change. ..The nominees for the Human Rights Tulip understand this at a profound level. Through their tireless efforts, these human rights defenders make a real difference for people and society.’
EŞİTİZ and EŞİK publish legal analyses of legislative bills and amendments on feminist and LGBTIQ+ issues, conduct awareness-raising campaigns (for example on the Istanbul Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence) and promote social mobilisation by the Turkish feminist movement.
‘For more than 40 years,’ Ms Bruins Slot said, ‘Hülya Gülbahar has been defending women’s rights and fighting injustice in Türkiye. She does so using her extensive legal expertise and through her influential network, comprised primarily of women, which is too extensive to ignore. And she has been very successful at it.
Other finalists
The two other finalists for the 2023 Human Rights Tulip were:
Julienne Baseke is a journalist and human rights defender who fights for women’s rights in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). As a journalist, Ms Baseke founded the South Kivu Women’s Media Association (AFEM), which aims to enhance women’s visibility and participation in the DRC media.
Claudelice dos Santos is a human rights and environmental activist in the Amazon region. She is the founder of the Zé Claudio e Maria Institute, whose shelter and protection house provides a safe haven for indigenous land, environmental and human rights defenders.
Cities of Rights – 75th UDHR Anniversary: The city of Utrecht wants to be city of human rights
Mohammadi Narges is one of the most recognised Human Rights Defenders in the world. She has received 8 major human rights awards according to THF’s digest of human rights awards but no media outlets got it right…
More on the toolkit (available on website) to create workshops for youth about filmmaking and human rights.
HURIDOCS 40th anniversary
More on ISHR‘s #Right2DefendRights campaign for the 25th anniversary of the UN Declaration on HRDs .
Responding to news that the Emirati authorities have begun a mass prosecution on trumped-up terrorism charges of more than 80 Emirati human rights activists – including renowned currently-jailed Emirati human rights activists who have already spent a decade behind bars – Aya Majzoub, Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Deputy Director, said:
“To begin hearings in a new sham mass trial in the midst of what it billed as ‘the most inclusive COP ever’, is a jaw-dropping show of contempt for human rights by the Emirati authorities. The timing appears to be deliberately intended to send a clear message to the world that it will not tolerate the slightest peaceful dissent and that the authorities have no intention of reforming the country’s dire rights record. COP28 has already laid bare the barriers of fear and legalised repression that smother dissent in the UAE.
“The UAE must immediately release all arbitrarily-detained prisoners, drop charges against them and end their ruthless assault on human rights and freedoms.”
The new mass trial – first reported by the Emirates Detainees Advocacy Centre and confirmed to Amnesty by exiled Emirati activists – is a joint prosecution of more than 80 defendants, including victims of a past mass trial such as Mohamed al-Siddiq, father of the late exiled Emirati human rights defender Alaa al-Siddiq, prisoners of conscience such as Khalid al-Nuaimi, Hadef al-Owais, Nasser bin Ghaith and Sultan al-Qasimi, and longstanding human rights defenders such as Mohamed al-Roken and Ahmed Mansoor (see below).
Fresh charges against Ahmed Mansoor
Last month, Amnesty UK campaigners flew a protest plane over Manchester City FC’s Etihad Stadium carrying a large banner saying “UAE – Free Ahmed Mansoor”. Mansoor is a blogger, poet and leading Emirati human rights activist who has been in jail and kept in solitary confinement in the UAE since 2017 as a direct result of his campaigning activity. In 2017, Mansoor was convicted on charges which included “insulting the status and prestige of the UAE and its symbols”, “publishing false information to damage the UAE’s reputation abroad” and “portraying the UAE as a lawless land”. The following year, Mansoor was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment, with the sentencing court also ordering that he be placed under surveillance for three years after release. His conviction and sentence were upheld by the country’s supreme court on 31 December 2018.
Ms Amini’s parents and brother were stopped from boarding their flight and had their passports confiscated, their lawyer said. They were banned from leaving despite having valid visas.
Speaking to the AFP news agency, the family’s lawyer, Chirinne Ardakani, said Ms Amini’s mother, father and brother had been “prohibited from boarding the flight that was to take them to France for the presentation of the Sakharov Prize”.
The president of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, called on Iran to “retract the decision” to ban the family from travelling. “Their place next Tuesday is at the European Parliament in Strasbourg to receive the Sakharov Prize, with the brave women of Iran,” she said on social media. “The truth cannot be silenced.”
From right, jailed Hong Kong barrister Chow Hang-tung and Chinese rights attorneys Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi were honored with human rights awards by the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe. Credit: Reuters, AP, Reuters
Three jailed attorneys from Hong Kong and China have been honoured with Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe human rights awards, as a Chinese court rejected appeals from two of them, upholding their original sentences for “subversion.”
The ceremony in Athens took place on Friday 24 November, the same day that a court in the eastern province of Shandong rejected appeals from Ding and Xu, who are currently serving 12- and 14-year jail terms handed down by the Linshu County People’s Court for “subversion of state power,” respectively.
“The dignity of our profession … it is bound up with the dignity of the law, with whether the law reflects our autonomy or denies it,” wrote Chow, who organized now-banned annual vigils commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen massacre.
“In that sense the building of democratic institutions that alone can safeguard the law’s dignity is also a lawyer’s duty, which is why all three of us receiving this prize today are jailed for working for democracy in China, a fight that may seem unrelated to our profession but is in fact, central to it,” said Chow.
She is currently awaiting trial under a security law on charges of “subversion” amid an ongoing crackdown on dissent in Hong Kong.
“It is a fight we cannot waver from, even when knowing that the laws we served would likely condemn us,” she said, describing the fight as “the highest service a lawyer can offer her fellow men.”
Rights activist Patrick Poon said the fact that Chow was honored alongside Xu and Ding shows how little difference there is now between the judicial systems in Hong Kong and mainland China, following a years-long crackdown on political opposition and public dissent in the wake of the 2019 protest movement.
The Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award identifies and honours those who embody Robert F. Kennedy’s belief that the power of individual and collective moral courage can overcome injustice. Over the past 40 years, the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award has recognized 59 outstanding activists and organizations from 32 countries. Honorees receive a cash prize of $30,000, but what sets this awards program apart is that they also receive ongoing support for their important work from RFK Human Rights—through campaigns and mobilization, strategic litigation, training and capacity-building, and other forms of critical support for their work and movements. For more on this and similar awards, see: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/awards/69FD28C0-FE07-4D28-A5E2-2C8077584068
Please note, users should only submit one entry each. If you’re interested in submitting multiple nominations for consideration, or if you’d like to submit additional information beyond what’s captured in the form below, please contact advocacy@rfkhumanrights.org. Deadline: December 15, 2023
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 