Antoine Madelin of the International Federation for Human Rights (OSCE/Shiv Sharma)
A new project to promote the effective protection of human rights defenders through the development of recommendations for governments was launched by the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) at a two-day expert meeting in Warsaw on 10 and 11 June 2013. Read the rest of this entry »
On 3 June 2013, an email was sent to Colonel Julián González, Chief of Police for Sucre, Colombia, informing him of a plan to kill human rights defender Juan David Díaz Chamorro, his wife Malena Martínez, and one other person closely linked to the family. Several other human rights defenders were copied in the email. Juan David Díaz Chamorro is the leader of the Sucre branch of the Movimiento Nacional de Víctimas de Crímenes de Estado – MOVICE (National Movement of Victims of State Crimes) and the son of Eudaldo Díaz, assassinated Mayor of El Roble, Sucre. Read the rest of this entry »
On 28 May 2013, the Supreme Court of Kazakhstan upheld the five-year prison sentence of human rights defender Roza Tuletaeva, Read the rest of this entry »
ABC News Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports on a conference held in Australia on a topic that sounds like it comes straight from the middle ages: sorcery. Read the rest of this entry »
The Women Human Rights Defenders International Coalition (WHRD IC) is looking to recruit an editor for the Manual on Documenting Violations against Women Human Rights Defenders. The editor will work closely with members of the WHRD IC’s Documentation Manual Working Group to complete the manual. Read the rest of this entry »
The Women Human Rights Defenders International Coalition submitted the following statement to the UN Human Rights Council whose Working Group on women’s equal, full and effective participation in Read the rest of this entry »
The Grupo Interdisciplinario por los Derechos Humanos GIDH (Interdisciplinary Group for Human Rights), based in Medellín, Colombia, has announced that it has been forced to close its offices based on information that threats received by the organisation in the last months would be realised within the next hours. GIDH is a not-for-profit organisation working with victims of state violence. Front Line Defenders Read the rest of this entry »
One should be grateful for small gains: Front Line Defenders reported that on 11 May 2013, the Gambian government released renowned Muslim cleric and human rights defender, Iman Baba Leigh, to whose arrest I referred earlier. The human rights defender was arrested on 3 December 2012, and was detained incommunicado for five months for declaring the execution of nine death row inmates to be inimical to Islamic teaching. Imam Baba Leigh Read the rest of this entry »
Amnesty International’s 2013 report comes with an introductory video which shows governments are using the excuse of ‘internal affairs’ in shameful attempts to block concerted international action to resolve human rights emergencies.
Roza Tuletaeva
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 