Posts Tagged ‘Human Rights Defenders’

Call for Applications for September 2023 by Shelter City Netherlands

March 22, 2023

On 21 March 2023 Justice & Peace Netherlands launched a new call for applications for human rights defenders at risk to participate in Shelter City. The deadline for applications is 4 April 2023.

Shelter City is a global movement of cities, organizations and people who stand side by side with human rights defenders at risk. Shelter City provides temporary safe and inspiring spaces for human rights defenders at risk where they re-energise, receive tailor-made support and engage with allies.

From September 2023 onwards, several cities in the Netherlands will receive human rights defenders for a period of three months. At the end of their stay in the Netherlands, participants are expected to return with new tools and energy to carry out their work at home.

Visit to the ICC in The Hague, 2022

Journalists’ Safe Haven Initiative: Justice & Peace aims to promote the safety of journalists, and in particular women journalists, worldwide so that they can build new strategies and continue their important work for freedom of expression in their country of origin. With support from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Justice & Peace will be able to provide two additional temporary safe spaces per year in The Hague for journalists at risk and provide them with tailor-made support.

Justice & Peace and the Asser Institute have established a collaborative relationship to strengthen and support the capacity of local human rights defenders worldwide. In the context of the Institute’s Visiting Researchers Programme, the Asser Institute hosts one Fellow per year within the framework of the Shelter City initiative by Justice & Peace. The selected Fellow will carry out a research project during the three-month period and take part in other human rights relevant (research) activities of the Asser Institute. In line with these activities, closer to the end of the three-month period, the Fellow will have to present the relevant research findings in a public or closed event. The Fellow may also participate in other (public) events like lectures or (panel) discussions.

To be eligible for Shelter City, human rights defenders should meet the following conditions:

  • They implement a non-violent approach in their work;
  • They are threatened or otherwise under pressure due to their work or activism;
  • They are willing and able to return to their country of origin after 3 months;
  • They are willing to speak publicly about their experience or about human rights in their country to the extent that their security situation allows;
  • They have a conversational level* of English (limited spots are available for French or Spanish speaking human rights defenders);
  • They have a valid passport (with no less than 18 months of validity at the time of applying) or be willing to carry out the procedures necessary for its issuance. Justice & Peace covers the costs of issuing a passport and / or visa (if applicable);
  • They are not subjected to any measure or judicial prohibition to leave the country;
  • They are willing to begin their stay in the Netherlands around September 2023.

Note that additional factors will be taken into consideration in the final round of selection, such as the added value of a stay in The Netherlands as well as gender, geographic, and thematic balance. Please note that only under exceptional circumstances are we able to accept human rights defenders currently residing in a third country.

see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2022/04/20/shelter-city-netherlands-call-for-applications-for-september-2022/

To apply for Shelter City, use the online application form below. An independent commission will select the participants.

Apply for Shelter City

For more information, please contact us at sheltercity@justiceandpeace.nl.

Tunisia: The rule of law on the brink

March 16, 2023

On 7 March 2023 EuroMed Rights issued the following statement regarding the situation in Tunisia:

For several weeks now, Kaïs Saïed’s presidentialist regime has been conducting a relentless campaign of arrests, intimidation, denigration and targeted attacks against political opponents, journalists, trade unionists and civil society representatives, under the pretext of an alleged conspiracy to undermine state security, accusations of corruption or contacts with foreign diplomats. International trade union activists who have come to participate in activities of the Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT), such as Esther Lynch, the General Secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation, have been expelled and any other trade union representatives are now persona non grata in Tunisia.

“These arrests based on the crime of opinion and the widespread repression of freedom of expression in all its forms constitute a serious breach of the rule of law. They raise fears of a return to the practices of the authoritarian regime that preceded the January 2011 revolution. The national dialogue that the UGTT has initiated in partnership with the Tunisian League for Human Rights (LTDH), the National Bar Association and the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights (FTDES), towards a roadmap to overcome the political, economic and social crisis, must be supported,” said Wadih Al-Asmar, President of EuroMed Rights.

A justice system at the orders

Accused of being “traitors” and “terrorists”, the opponents of the regime put in place, month after month, by President Kaïs Saïed since his power grab of 25 July 2021, are challenging the concentration of powers, in particular the supervision of the Ministry of Justice and the dismissal of many judges and prosecutors. Controlling the judicial power is a weapon that the Tunisian authorities no longer hesitate to use and abuse to silence critics.

“The rule of law in Tunisia is on the brink of collapse,” added Wadih Al-Asmar. “The presumption of innocence is being flouted. Moreover, to declare that anyone who exonerates those prosecuted would be considered an accomplice is a denial of the role and independence of judges and prosecutors. The ban on demonstrations and the desire to isolate Tunisian civil society from its international contacts are other symptoms of the regime’s autocratic drift.”

Attacks on migrants

On 21 February, President Kaïs Saïed continued his diatribe by calling for “urgent measures” against the “hordes” of sub-Saharan migrants, endorsing the conspiratorial theory of the “Great Replacement,” which asserts the existence of a plot to change the demographic composition of the country. As a result, racist and violent attacks, both official and unofficial, against migrants from sub-Saharan Africa continue, leading to arrests and deportations.

“Migrants have been expelled from their homes and fired from their jobs; children have been removed from their schools; women of sub-Saharan origin have been reportedly raped. Fear is growing among migrants who have been living in Tunisia, some for years, causing many families to leave the country to avoid facing violence,” said Rasmus Alenius Boserup, Executive Director of EuroMed Rights. “The European Union and its Member States, in their bilateral relations with Tunisia, must make clear that arbitrary repression and incitement to racial hatred are unacceptable, and should express solidarity with all those arrested, defamed and subjected to violence.”

And see also: https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/03/17/tunisia-talks-eu-should-privilege-human-rights-over-politics

Five Rights Defenders in Burundi should be released immediately

March 14, 2023
From the left to the right, Sonia Ndikumasabo, Prosper Runyange, Sylvana Inamahoro, Audace Havyarimana and Marie Emerusabe.
From the left to the right, Sonia Ndikumasabo, Prosper Runyange, Sylvana Inamahoro, Audace Havyarimana and Marie Emerusabe. © 2023 Private

Burundian authorities should immediately and unconditionally release five human rights defenders arbitrarily arrested on February 14, 2023, and drop the baseless charges against them, Amnesty International, the Burundi Human Rights Initiative, and Human Rights Watch said on 14 March 2023.

The five human rights defenders are accused of rebellion and of undermining internal state security and the functioning of public finances. The charges appear to relate only to their relationship with an international organization abroad and the funding they have received from this organization. Two of the defenders work for the Association of Women Lawyers in Burundi (Association des femmes juristes du Burundi, AFJB) and three for the Association for Peace and the Promotion of Human Rights in Burundi (Association pour la paix et la promotion des droits de l’Homme, APDH).

“The arrests of the five human rights defenders and the serious charges brought against them signal a worsening climate for independent civil society in Burundi,” said Clémentine de Montjoye, Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch. “If working in partnership with or receiving funding from international groups is treated as a criminal offense and a threat to state security, what little space was left for civil society to operate in Burundi will be closed.

On February 16, Martin Niteretse, Minister of Interior, Community Development and Public Security, accused the organizations of working with an international nongovernmental organization. Intelligence agents arrested four of the defenders – Sonia Ndikumasabo, president, and Marie Emerusabe, general coordinator, of AFJB; Audace Havyarimana, legal representative, and Sylvana Inamahoro, executive director, of APDH – on February 14 at Bujumbura’s Melchior Ndadaye Airport as they were preparing to fly to Uganda for a meeting with partners.

Prosper Runyange, the APDH land project coordinator, was arrested in Ngozi on February 14 and transferred to Bujumbura the next day. The five defenders were held at the National Intelligence Service (Service national de renseignement, SNR) headquarters in Bujumbura, then transferred to Mpimba central prison in Bujumbura, on February 17. On March 2, the high court of Ntahangwa in Bujumbura confirmed their pretrial detention.

The two organizations work on gender-based violence and land rights and are officially registered in Burundi. They help some of the most marginalized groups in Burundian society. The judicial authorities’ decision to pursue prosecution of the defenders, apparently solely on the grounds of their organizations’ partnership with and funding from an international organization, has triggered fears of another civil society crackdown in Burundi and undermines the president’s stated reform agenda, the organizations said. In October 2018, the authorities suspended the activities of most foreign organizations in Burundi and forced them to re-register, which included submitting documentation that stated the ethnicity of their Burundian employees.

The government policy, based on a law on foreign nongovernmental organizations, adopted in January 2017, caused some international organizations to close their offices in Burundi because they disagreed with government-imposed ethnic quotas and objected to the requirement to provide information on the ethnicity of their staff. Some said they feared that submitting this information could put their employees at risk of ethnic profiling and targeting.

The charges of endangering state security and rebellion against these five human rights defenders are absurd,” said Carina Tertsakian from the Burundi Human Rights Initiative. “If the authorities have questions about their sources of funding, these can be solved through normal administrative channels, as provided for by the law.”

During late President Pierre Nkurunziza’s third and final term, from 2015 to 2020, independent civil society and media were often targeted, and their members attacked, forcibly disappeared, detained, and threatened. Scores of human rights defenders and journalists fled the country and many remain in exile. There has been almost total impunity for these crimes.

Since President Évariste Ndayishimiye came to power in June 2020 and despite his promises to restore freedom of expression and association, the government’s hostility toward Burundi’s once thriving civil society and media remains. The arrests of the five rights defenders followed the conviction, on January 2, 2023, of an online journalist, Floriane Irangabiye, to 10 years in prison, on charges of “undermining the integrity of the national territory” in violation of her rights to free speech and to a fair trial.

These latest arrests and Irangabiye’s conviction reverse a brief moment of optimism after the acquittal and release, in December, of Tony Germain Nkina, a lawyer and former human rights defender who spent more than two years unjustly imprisoned on unsubstantiated charges of collaboration with a rebel group. Twelve human rights defenders and journalists in exile were convicted in June 2020 of participating in a May 2015 coup attempt. The verdict, which was only made public in February 2021, came after a deeply flawed trial during which the defendants were absent and did not have legal representation, flouting the most basic due process principles. The 12 were found guilty of “attacks on the authority of the State,” “assassinations,” and “destruction.”

The arrest of Ndikumasabo, Emerusabe, Havyarimana, Inamahoro, and Runyange appears to be designed to punish the human rights defenders and their organizations for collaborating with an international organization, obstruct their organizations’ activities, and intimidate other activists. Such behavior belies Burundian authorities’ claims that they respect human rights and further stains the image of openness and reform that they try to project internationally, the organizations said.

“Actions speak louder than words,” said Flavia Mwangovya, Deputy Regional Director at Amnesty International. “If the Burundian authorities want their human rights promises to be taken seriously, they should allow civil society to do its valuable work – including defending and assisting victims of human rights violations – without harassment.”

https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/03/14/burundi-free-five-rights-defenders

ISHR marking the 25th anniversary of the adoption of the UN Declaration on human rights defenders

March 11, 2023

To mark the 25th anniversary of the adoption of the UN Declaration on human rights defenders in 1998, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders, Mary Lawlor, will focus on successes achieved by human rights defenders in her upcoming thematic report to the Human Rights Council. The report will demonstrate how the work of defenders is crucial in helping achieve more just and equitable societies. 

This side event, which is co-sponsored by a number of States and organisations, including ISHR, will take place a day before the Special Rapporteur’s presentation of the report to the Human Rights Council and in addition to the Special Rapporteur herself, the panel will include a State representative who will outline how that State collaborated with defenders to bring about human rights gains. It will also include two defenders who will speak about successes they have achieved.

Speakers: 

  • Mary Lawlor, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of Human Rights Defenders
  • Gustavo Gallon, Permanent Representative of Colombia to the United Nations Office at Geneva
  • Tara Houska, US-based citizen of Couchiching First Nation, Environmental & Indigenous rights defender
  • Daniel Goinic, Human Rights Program Director at Legal Resources Centre in Moldova

Moderator: Imogen Foulkes, BBC Correspondent in Geneva

Due to space limitation, registration is mandatory to attend the event in-person: please click here to register. 

The event will be live streamed on ISHR’s YouTube channel.

https://ishr.ch/events/success-through-perseverance-solidarity-25-years-of-achievements-by-human-rights-defenders/

For the report, see: https://ishr.ch/latest-updates/success-through-perseverance-and-solidarity-25-years-of-achievements-by-human-rights-defenders/

Bahrain does also “parliament washing”

March 11, 2023

Bahrain Revokes Human Rights Watch Visas; Government Using Global Parliamentary Meeting to Whitewash Repression.

Human Rights Watch Logo

On 10 March 2023 Human Rights Watch reported that staff members – who were to attend the 146th Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) Assembly – had their visas revoked. Denial of entry into Bahrain has happened to other HRDs before, see e.g. : https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2012/01/20/hrfs-brian-dooley-refused-entry-into-bahrain/

Bahrain’s hosting of sporting and high-level international events is a transparent attempt to launder its decades-long campaign to crush political opposition and suffocate the country’s vibrant civil society,” said Tirana Hassan, Human Rights Watch’s acting executive director. “Its unilateral reversal of Human Rights Watch’s access to the IPU conference is a blatant example of its escalating repression. Governments, organizations with influence, and key officials should speak out loudly against Bahrain’s abuses so they are not complicit in its efforts to whitewash its horrific rights record.

Bahrain is hosting the meeting of the IPU, a global organization of national parliaments, from March 11-15. The organization’s slogan is “For democracy. For everyone,” and the theme of the 146th Assembly is “Promoting peaceful coexistence and inclusive societies: Fighting intolerance.” These statements are in stark contrast to the extensive record of serious human rights abuses in Bahrain that Human Rights Watch and other rights organizations have documented, Human Rights Watch said. This includes the continued detention of the prominent human rights activist and Danish-Bahraini dual citizen Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja. Al-Khawaja is reportedly suffering serious health problems while being denied adequate medical care. He is this year’s laureate of the MEA [see: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/tag/abdul-hadi-al-khawaja/]

….. Two of Bahrain’s former parliament members are in prison for exercising their freedom of expression, and the government has forced many more into exile and stripped them of their citizenship.

On March 5, Bahrain hosted Formula One’s (F1) opening season race. Twenty-one groups, including Human Rights Watch, sent a letter to F1’s president to raise “serious concerns over F1’s ongoing role in ‘sportswashing’ amidst a deterioration in Bahrain’s human rights situation.” An F1 driver, Lewis Hamilton, recently said that he is “not sure [the human rights situation] has got better while we have been coming all these years” to countries like Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.

With local civil society severely restricted by Bahrain’s autocratic government, members of the IPU Assembly should live up to its organizational values and speak out on behalf of Bahrain’s victims of repression,” Hassan said.

https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/03/10/bahrain-revokes-human-rights-watch-visas

For those who missed it: relive the moving MEA 2023 ceremony

February 24, 2023

You can now relive the MEA ceremony which was held on 16 February 2023 and get inspired by the 2023 Laureates, three outstanding human rights defenders:

-Feliciano Reyna, Venezuela

-Delphine Djiraibé, Chad

-Khurram Parvez, Kashmir.

See also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2023/01/19/breaking-news-laureates-of-the-mea-for-2023-announced/

The Ceremony was live-streamed directly from the Salle Communale de Plainpalais, Geneva, co-hosted with the City of Geneva.

Nominations for the 2023 Right Livelihood Award are now open

February 23, 2023

For more on this award see: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/awards/97238E26-A05A-4A7C-8A98-0D267FDDAD59

• You will need to create a free Submittable account in order to submit to these forms, simply by inputting your name and email address. Here is a quick guide on how to get started: https://submittable.help/en/articles/904856-how-can-i-submit  

• You can save a draft of your work if you would like to finish filling out the form at a later date. 

• We will follow-up with nominators about their submission by email. Please be sure the email address used to create your Submittable Account is one that you check regularly. 

• Please note: Each individual may only submit one nomination per year. Organisations may submit multiple nominations. 

• Please reach out to Submittable’s Customer Support team with any technical questions at support@submittable.com 

• For further information, please visit our website and for any questions directly relating to process or information required, please contact our research team by email at research@rightlivelihood.org

Right Livelihood Award – Nominations 2023 (English)

CESCR’s General Comment no. 26 on land rights defenders

February 8, 2023

Vincent Ploton leads ISHR’s strategic engagement and litigation with the UN Treaty Bodies, and he drew attention to General Comment N° 26 of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which spells out the obligations of States parties to the ICESCR in relation to land rights. This constitutes the first guidance wholly dedicated to land rights across the UN Treaty Body system. CESCR’s new resource provides a major opportunity for land rights defenders at a time when the global battle for natural resources is at a historical high, and those who stand to protect their land are on the frontline. In all world regions, people who resist the destruction and exploitation of their land are facing judicial harassment, threats and murders. Indigenous and peasant communities who defend their rights to cultivate and live on their ancestral lands are dispossessed and extorted by powerful actors. CESCR’s General Comment spells out the measures that States parties must take to uphold compliance with the obligations set out in the Covenant.

ISHR welcomes the dedicated section of the General Comment on land rights defenders, which echoes our inputs and calls on States parties to:

  • Publicly recognise … the  importance and legitimacy of the work of human rights defenders and a commitment that no violence or threats against them will be tolerated
  • Repeal of any State legislation or any measures that are intended to penalise or obstruct the work of human rights defenders
  • Strengthen State institutions responsible for safeguarding the work of human rights defenders
  • Investigate and punish any form of violence or threat against human rights defenders
  • Adopt and implement programmes, in consultation with potential beneficiaries, that are well resourced and have inbuilt coordination mechanisms that ensure that adequate protection measures are provided to human rights defenders at risk whenever necessary

Speaking about this groundbreaking new guidance, the Committee’s Co-Rapporteur Rodrigo Uprimny said: “I hope that communities whose land rights are denied, including indigenous communities, can count on the force of international law, and the norms dictated by the International Covenant on Economic, Social and and Cultural Rights. The General Comment reaffirms and reinforces the concept of free, prior and informed consent and also recognizes the fundamental work of defenders of land rights.

See also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2022/04/21/green-economy-and-human-rights-defenders-provide-data-denounce-attacks/

.https://ishr.ch/latest-updates/new-resource-for-land-rights-defenders/

NGO report on China’s influencing of UN human rights bodies

February 8, 2023

UN secretary general Antonio Guterres with Chinese president Xi Jinping during an official visit to Geneva on 18 January 2017. (UN Photo/Jean-Marc Ferré)

On 25 January, ISHR released a new briefing paper outlining China’s tactics to influence the UN human rights treaty bodies (UNTBs), including various ways in which Chinese officials have sought to disrupt, limit and undermine their work. The paper concludes with possible responses to these efforts, on the part of governments and the UN itself.

In parallel, ISHR hosted a panel discussion on the topic with former member of the UN Committee against Torture (CAT) Felice Gaer, William Nee of the Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders, Peter Irwin from the Uyghur Human Rights Project, and ISHR’s Director of Treaty Body advocacy, Vincent Ploton. ISHR Programme Director Sarah Brooks moderated the discussions.

The incidents recounted, while qualitative in nature, provide compelling evidence of China’s ability to effectively and unrelentingly restrict civil society engagement with [UN treaty bodies] in the context of specific reviews, and deter independent sources from speaking up,” the report states.

The report adds to growing suspicion of Beijing’s sway over the UN human rights office, after it led a successful campaign last year to delay for months the publication of a report concluding that mass detention of Uyghurs and other religious minorities in Xinjiang could amount to crimes against humanity.

When treaty bodies do their work well, they document violations and that can lead to serious actions such as the establishment of commissions of inquiry at the Human Rights Council, or even refereeing situations to the International Criminal Court, which can then lead up to indictment of national leaders or heads of state,” Vincent Ploton, co-author of the report, told Geneva Solutions. “So the consequences can be far reaching.”

China, which is party to six out of the ten treaties, has consistently sponsored candidates that have previously worked for the government and that work in institutions or organisations with close ties to the government, Sarah Brooks, co-author of the report, explained. At least one of them, Xia Jie currently sitting in the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), has formal ties to the Chinese communist party.

The authors recount how in 2015 during China’s evaluation by the Committee Against Torture (CAT), the Chinese committee member was kicked out by the chair for taking photos of the activists present, an intimidation tactic that China but also other countries have been known to use against campaigners who come to Geneva.

Seven Chinese activists were also reportedly prevented from travelling to Geneva to participate in the evaluation through threats and even detention. Felice Gaer, CAT chair at that time, recalled the event at a panel organised to launch the report.

This “creates a chilling effect”, leading “those who might be facing particular risks of reprisals to walk back their interest in participating in the process”, Brooks told Geneva Solutions.

The Chinese government has particularly targeted Uyghur and Tibetan groups, telling the office not to publish their reports on the UN human rights website under the pretext that they are “splitists” and therefore their input is misinformation, Gaer recalled at the panel. See also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2022/09/01/finally-the-long-awaited-un-report-on-china/

Ploton said this external pressure exerted on UN staff is even “more worrying”, but said. At the same time, reports submitted by what civil society groups call Gongos, meaning government organised NGOs, that pose as civil society while promoting state interests, have been flooding the reviews, making it hard for the experts to know which sources to trust.

Speaking at the panel, William Nee of the Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders warned that avenues for expression in China, from press to social media to academia, had been closing in recent years, making the UN system all the more important for Chinese rights activists.

China is set to be evaluated by the Committee on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights (CESCR) in February, followed by the CEDAW in May.

In an email response to Geneva Solutions, the Chinese permanent mission to the UN in Geneva rejected the report, calling the accusations “groundless and unjustified”.s

China is far from being the only country trying to influence the treaty bodies. The report also mentions Saudi Arabia and Russia. An analysis by the Geneva Academy from 2018 found that 44 per cent of treaty body expert members had experience working for the executive branch in their respective countries, as opposed to independent civil society groups or academia.

Ploton explained that this was allowed by countries practising “horse trading”, meaning that they agree to vote for a candidate in exchange for a vote for theirs.

Treaty bodies members adopted in 2012 the Addis Ababa guidelines, which spell out what independence and impartiality means for them, but the authors say Geneva Academy’s findings show there has been little progress since then. A major review of the treaty bodies system took place in 2020 for which civil society “had high hopes”, Ploton said. But in the end, “the process was a failure”, he said, describing the issue of reforming treaty bodies as a “hot potato” no state or UN official wanted to hold. “This is not a new phenomenon,” he said. “What is unique about China is how systematic it is.”

China has also been pushing for reforms to keep the expert groups in check, for example keeping them from doing follow-ups after a review or even banning NGOs that are not accredited by the UN Economic and Social Council, which had been blocking for years certain NGOs from being approved until recently.

A few countries including the Nordics and the United Kingdom have taken steps of their own to make sure that candidates are independent. “But the number of countries that take the process seriously is too narrow,” Ploton said.

The ISHR calls in the report for the creation of an independent vetting process, in the image of the International Criminal Court and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which have independent expert panels to monitor member elections. Both were NGO-led initiatives, as were the treaty bodies, Ploton said. “Perhaps it’s on us to make that change happen,” he added.

https://ishr.ch/latest-updates/none-of-them-take-orders-from-anywhere-else-than-beijing-analysing-chinas-efforts-to-influence-the-un-human-rights-treaty-body-system/

True Heroes Films launches HRDs animation pilot

February 7, 2023
The animation pilot series “True Heroes Are For Real” explores the moment when ordinary people stand up for justice. When does one become a human rights defender? On the 16th of February 2023, the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders ceremony is taking place in Geneva and will celebrate three outstanding activists; Khurram Parvez from Kashmir, on of the 2023 Martin Ennals Award laureates is part of this animation pilot series. THE HEROES ANIMATIONS will also cover Ahmed Mansoor – UAE, Estela de Carlotto – Argentina, Asma Jahangir – Pakistan, Ilham Tohti – China, Eren Keskin – Turkey, and Sizani Ngubane – South Africa.

True Heroes Films (THF) collaborates with Human Rights Defenders through audio-visual communication. Besides the animation series, we are currently preparing a library of short messages to highlight the work and courage of these Heroes through different themes. Both projects are in the fundraising phase. Feel free to reach out if you would like to support our work.

Our True Heroes Digest of Awards is an overview of all international human rights awards and laureates. The Digest recognises and applauds those who stand up for their community. Recently it reached the milestone of over 3000 Human Rights Defenders: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedi… .
We also have over 100 in-depth portraits and interviews with some of the most outstanding True Heroes of our time. View them on our website http://www.trueheroesfilms.org

Three outstanding activists who pioneered human rights movements in Chad, Venezuela, and Kashmir are to receive the Martin Ennals Award 2023 on February 16th in Geneva. The common denominator between the 2023 Laureates, Delphine Djiraibé (Chad), Feliciano Reyna (Venezuela), and Khurram Parvez (Kashmir) is their courage, passion, and determination to bring the voice of the voiceless to the international arena, despite the ongoing, sometimes life-threatening, challenges they endure. [see: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2023/01/19/breaking-news-laureates-of-the-mea-for-2023-announced/]The ceremony takes place on February 16th at 6.30 pm. To sign up: https://www.martinennalsaward.org/2023-edition/ 

https://mailchi.mp/81327afe3d34/true-heroes-are-for-real?e=ed48709ac7