Posts Tagged ‘national award’
December 13, 2019
The Defenders’ Coalition and HRD Working Group in Kenya announced the winners of the Human Rights Defender of the Year 2019. The awards are a local initiative to honour, promote and protect the work of HRDs in the Kenya.
Wilfred Olal and the Social Justice Working Group are the winners of the Human Rights Defender of the Year 2019. Wilfred is the coordinator of the Dandora Community Justice Centre and Convener of the Social Justice Centres Working Group. He began his work in human rights in 2005 when he joined The Bunge la Mwananchi social movement. He started as a member then rose to the position of national coordinator. The movement is an advocacy for the expansion of civic space and a campaign on the right to protest against corruption and impunity. In 2014, Wilfred and other HRDs decided to set up social justice centres to advocate for social justice and human rights in informal settlements of Nairobi. He started the Social Justice Centres Working Group (SJCWG) in Mathare, then later Dandora. SJCWG advocates and fights for the promotion of human rights in all spheres through documentation, monitoring, reporting of cases of human rights violations and holding community dialogues within their areas of advocacy. Today, SJCWG is a consortium of 28 social justice centers mainly based in Nairobi, Kisumu and Mombasa’s informal settlements.
Benazir Mohammed and the Intersex Persons Society of Kenya won Upcoming Human Rights Defender of the Year while Denis Nzioka, Peninah Mwangi and the late Onyango Oloo won the Munir Mazrui Lifetime Achievement Award. The Human Rights Defenders Awards ceremony was hosted by the French Embassy in Nairobi, with the support from the Belgian, Dutch, German and Swedish Embassies and Haki Africa – a national human rights NGO based in Mombasa, Kenya.
https://www.peacebrigades.org/en/news/human-rights-defenders-awards-kenya
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Tags: Benazir Mohammed, Denis Nzioka, EU, human rights awards, Human Rights Defender of the Year Award (Kenya), Kenya, national award, Onyango Oloo, PBI Kenya, Social Justice Working Group, Wilfred Olal
May 29, 2019
Prize winners Germán Graciano Posso and Genaro de Jesús Graciano with Verdiana Garcia from the Church of Sweden and Cesar Grajales, Diakonia Sweden Colombia Program. Photo: LWF/S. Gallay
Three award-winning Colombian human rights defenders visited the Lutheran World Federation on 27-28 May as part of a European tour to raise awareness of the dangers and difficulties faced by so many people working for justice and peace in the country today. According to the Somos Defensores network which monitors attacks against human rights defenders, 2018 was one of the worst years ever for these activists and social leaders in Colombia, with over 800 attacks and 155 murders reported. [https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2019/04/26/somos-defensores-in-colombia-publishes-annual-report-2018-worst-ever/]
The three are recipients of the 2018 National Human Rights Defenders award, presented by the Church of Sweden and the Swedish faith-based organization Diakonia, with the support of the Swedish government. Its goal is to draw international attention to struggles of those working for human rights, especially those located in isolated, grassroots communities/
Germán Graciano Posso, legal representative of the San José de Apartadó Peace Community in the northwest of Colombia, shared stories of over 300 members and supporters of his community who have been murdered in the past two decades. The small farming community of some 600 people was founded in 1997 at the height of the conflict between the government and members of the two main guerrilla groups, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN)… Germán said he and the community “had high hopes with the country’s peace process that everything would change for the better” but that has not happened. The paramilitary presence has been growing in the past months, he said, and young people continue to be recruited into their ranks, an issue that has been acknowledged by the Ombudsman office.
Dolis Estela Valencia is a leading member of the Black and Afro-Descendant Community Council of Alto Mira y Fronteras in Tumaco, on the Pacific coast close to the border with Ecuador. The Council represents 42 local communities, working to support the Afro-Colombian people whose collective land rights were recognized by the government in 1993. Despite that legal recognition, Dolis shared her experience of death threats, forced displacements and assassinations of those struggling to defend their land and livelihoods Farmers in this community are trying to grow cocoa beans, bananas and other traditional crops instead of the coca leaves that drive Colombia’s lucrative drug trafficking industry. Her community is included in the government program for the substitution of illegal crops as part of the peace accords.
Genaro de Jesús Graciano is legal representative of a socio-environmental organization, Movimiento Ríos Vivos in Antioquia which includes 15 grassroots communities affected by the giant Ituango hydroelectric dam project. Plans for the 220-meter high dam across the Cauca river were completed a decade ago and construction began in 2011, but Genaro said the project –one of the largest of its kind in Latin America – has been flawed from the start…Genaro and his organization have filed official complaints and requests for compensation from the construction company and shareholders, the Empresas Públicas de Medellin and the regional Government of Antioquia. Besides, the national environment authority (ANLA) has issued official warnings about the dangers of this project which have been disregarded. In the meantime, 5 environmental leaders have been killed, while many others have been the targets of death threats, discrimination and exclusion from public debates about the future of the dam.
As well as sharing stories during an encounter at LWF headquarters and meeting UN special rapporteurs in Geneva, Germán, Dolis and Genaro were also visiting Berlin, Stockholm and Uppsala as part of the 16 to 29 May European tour. A fourth prize winner, 78-year-old community leader Maria Ligia Chaverra, was unable to take part in the tour because of health reasons. All of them underline the importance of the Human Rights Defenders prize in shining a much-needed spotlight on their stories and bringing international attention to the plight of their communities.
https://www.lutheranworld.org/news/dangerous-task-defending-human-rights-colombia
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Tags: awareness raising, Colombia, Diakonie, Dolis Estela Valencia, environmental issues, Genaro de Jesús Graciano, Germán Graciano Posso, Human Rights Defenders, Lutheran World Federation, Maria Ligia Chaverra, minorities, national award, Somos Defensores, Sweden
May 15, 2019
Students from Manningtree High School after winning the Human Rights Prize with Emma Berry, gallery manager at Art Exchange and Katya Al Khateeb from the university’s Human Rights Centre
Nothing world shocking but good to see how human rights awards can be used at the national level to inspire students:
The University of Essex’s annual Human Rights Prize is open to secondary schools and sixth form colleges and aims to highlight human rights issues and empower young people to stand up for others. Manningtree High School students spent a day on campus in December as part of the project. They heard bite-size lectures from human rights experts, visited a marketplace in the Hex – staffed by representatives from Amnesty International, Hope Not Hate and Refugee Action Colchester – and brainstormed ideas with visual artist Jane Frederick and poet Luke Wright.
They then split into smaller groups to develop their creative projects over the next ten weeks. The students’ final presentations, delivered to an audience at Essex Business School, showcased the campaigns staged in their own schools, which featured videos, photography, dance and poetry. A spokesman for Manningtree High School said: “As part of their work, the group planned in detail and decided to visit Highfields Primary to work with Year 5’s on human rights.,,On our return to the university, loaded with props and a well-rehearsed presentation, our students excelled.
https://www.harwichandmanningtreestandard.co.uk/news/17638711.manningtree-school-scoops-human-rights-award/
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Tags: Essex (UK), human rights awards, Manningtree High School, national award, students, youth
April 9, 2019
Posted in AI, awards, human rights, Human Rights Defenders | 1 Comment »
Tags: AI UK, awards, Giles Duley, journalists, Kate Allen, Kyaw Soe Oo., media, Missing Princess, Myanmar, national award, UK, Wa Lone, Windrush
March 12, 2019
Helena Maleno – Credit: Fadel Senna (AFP), Getty Images
The Court of Appeals in Tangier has dropped its charges against Spanish activist Helena Maleno. Morocco had charged Maleno, a spokesperson and activist for migrants, in 2017 with colluding with human traffickers to illegally move people across borders. However, the court confirmed on Monday that there was no evidence of a crime.
Based in Tangier for the last 16 years, Maleno leads the NGO Walking Borders, or Caminando Fronteras. Founded in 2002, the organization acts as a lifeline for migrants who are trying to reach Europe by crossing from Morocco to Spain. Walking Borders also documents human rights violations on both sides of the border and provides legal, social, and medical support to migrants. Maleno regularly receives calls from migrants in distress as they attempt the perilous Mediterranean crossing and then alerts maritime authorities in Spain, Morocco, and Algeria to the existence and location of the boats. In a speech earlier this year, the Spanish minister of interior development, Jose Luis Albalos Meco, said that 70 percent of calls to maritime authorities regarding boats at risk come from Maleno herself or her organization. The statement was backed up by Captain Miguel Zea, maritime rescue chief in Almeria, Spain, who has said that Maleno “is the person who has saved the most lives in the Strait – at least 10,000.”
UN human rights experts have denounced the case against Maleno, including the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders in a report to the UN Human Rights Council in 2018.
The charges Morocco filed against Maleno have their origins in an investigation led by Spain’s Unit for Combating Immigration Networks and Document Counterfeiting (UCRIF) in 2012. The investigation was sparked by frequent calls made by Maleno to naval authorities regarding boats of migrants in the western Mediterranean waters. The calls, despite saving countless lives, also aided directly in the migrants’ transfer to the Spanish coast. In April 2017, Spain found insufficient grounds to pursue a criminal case but passed the investigation on to Morocco. The Moroccan courts first dismissed the case in December 2018, but Monday’s announcement, in response to an appeal filed with the Moroccan Prosecutor’s Office, stands as final..
Maleno responded to the news in a video she posted to her Twitter. In the video, she expresses that while she is “happy to be free,” the struggle does not end with the charges being dropped”. She said that “this is a very difficult time for human rights defenders as we are being persecuted and criminalized … To defend the right to life is not a crime.”
Maleno has won international recognitions with several awards, including the human rights award “Nacho de la Mata” (2015), the Human Rights Award of the Human Rights Association of Spain (2018), and the MacBride Peace Prize (2018).
https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2019/03/267803/morocco-case-spanish-human-rights-activist-helena-maleno/
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Tags: Helena Maleno, migrants, Morocco, national award, profile, refugees, rescue, Spain, Sydney McCourt, Walking Borders (NGO)
December 4, 2018
On the 30 November, the Kato Mikeladze Awards were held in Georgia to celebrate women’s rights activists in Georgia.
It is not just in Kenya that national human rights award play a role [https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2018/12/03/human-rights-defenders-in-kenya-honored-with-national-awards/]. In Georgia the Kato Mikeladze Awards recognize women human rights defenders. The Kato Mikeladze award celebrates a young generation of human rights defenders who work to advance gender equality. Nominees included 14 young civic leaders, journalists, researchers and entrepreneurs who advocate for sexual and reproductive rights, gender equality in education, the elimination of gender-based violence and the rights of migrants and minority groups.
Ida Bakhturidze, civic activist and one of the founders of the platform Women from Georgia, received the award in recognition of her achievements in supporting women’s rights and gender equality.
“We salute our award winners and nominees for their courage in standing up for equal rights,” stated Louisa Vinton, head of the UN system in Georgia. Stressing the importance for young champions for women’s rights, Nana Pantsulaia, Executive Director of the Women’s Fund in Georgia stated “Georgian women are becoming more vocal across all spheres of life. They make their voice heard in politics, economic activities, education and human rights protection.” Nonetheless, there is still a large deficit of female representation in parliament and many areas of public life in Georgia.
http://georgiatoday.ge/news/13533/Kato-Mikeladze-Awards-Recognizes-Women’s-Rights-Activists-
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Tags: Georgia, human rights of women, Ida Bakhturidze, Kato Mikeladze Awards, Louisa Vinton, national award, UN, women human rights defenders, youth
December 3, 2018
Kenya is one of the few countries with a fully developed system of national awards for human rights defenders. They are organized by the National Coalition of Human Rights Defenders Kenya and the Working Group on Human Defenders. A ceremony was held on 1 December 2018 at the residence of the Belgium ambassador.
A panel of eminent Kenyans chaired by former Chief Justice Willy Mutunga has honoured rights activist Okiya Omtatah with a Lifetime Achivement award. Omtatah also scooped the Popular Vote award in the annual ceremony.
Anastacia Nambo and Is’shaq Abubakar were awarded the 2018 Human Rights Defender of the year award:
Ms Nambo from Mombasa is a mother, a preacher and an avid advocate of environmental rights. She started her human rights work in 2009 when the Metal Refinery was established in the Uhuru Owino slums. The adverse effects of the metal refinery led to active advocacy and lobbying by Nambo and her community. Threats and attacks. Their struggle bore fruit in 2014 when the refinery was closed. She has endured verbal attacks, threats through texts and attempts to break into her home and had to seek refuge in Uganda.
Is’shaq, a public relations manager working with indigenous communities in Lamu, is a human rights defender on environmental rights issues. He co-founded Save Lamu, an umbrella of CBOs established in Lamu in the onset of the Lapsset project. Save Lamu teaches the community on the environmental impact of the Lapset project and seeks legal redress for the locals. His work has earned him threats and police harassment which he has overcome through strategic partnerships with mainstream organisations like the NCHRD, Muslims for Human Rights (Muhuri) and Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR). Receiving his award, he said it will legitimise his work and encourage other human rights advocates in Lamu.
Christine Kandie won the Upcoming Human Rights Defender of the Year award. Kandie fights for the land rights of Endorois women and is the programme’s officer for the Endorois Welfare Council (EWC). She represented her community at the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights (ACHPR) session in 2011.
The objective of the awards is to honour extraordinary work of human rights defenders who face a myriad of challenges in their calling. “The award ceremony is a special occasion for these courageous individuals who do excellent work within our community,” said National Coalition of Human Rights Defenders Executive Director Kanau Ngugi.
Read more at: https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/article/2001304811/human-rights-guardians-feted-ahead-of-day-of-human-rights-celebrations
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Tags: Anastacia Nambo, Belgium, Christine Kandie, human rights awards, Human Rights Defender of the Year Award (Kenya), Human Rights Defenders, Is’shaq Abubakar, Kanau Ngugi, Kenya, national award, National Coalition of Human Rights Defenders – Kenya, Okiya Omtatah
May 23, 2018
Peter Sewakiryanga (left) and Margret Arach Orech after receiving their awards at a function in Bugolobi. Photo by Ashraf Kasirye
The 2018 Human Rights Defenders Award went to Margaret Arach Orech, the founder of Uganda Landmine Survivors’ Association and Peter Sewakiryanga, the founder of Kyampisi Childcare Ministries, an organisation that supports child victims of sacrifice.
Arach, who lost her leg to a landmine during an attack by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels in 1998, uses her organisation to solicit for support for fellow survivors and persons with disabilities.
Sewakiryanga, a pastor now takes care of 80 child survivors of trafficking and human sacrifice has built an extensive network linking communities and security to track suspected cases. In 2017, Sewakiryanga travelled to Oman to rescue six victims of child trafficking. He is credited for championing research and spearheading an awareness campaign in communities to stop the crime.
https://www.newvision.co.ug/new_vision/news/1478305/ugandans-eu-human-rights-awards
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Tags: children's rights, EU, human rights awards, Human Rights Defenders Award (EU Uganda), human trafficking, land mine victims, Margaret Arach Orech, national award, Peter Sewakiryanga, Uganda
March 24, 2018
Journalists take part in a protest outside the State Government building in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico to mark one year since the murder of journalist Miroslava Breach (AFP Photo/HERIKA MARTINEZ)
The UN and AFP launched an award Thursday 22 March 2018 to honor journalists who risk their lives to cover human rights abuses in Mexico, in tribute to two celebrated reporters murdered last year. The Breach-Valdez Prize will honor journalists who follow in the footsteps of their slain colleagues Miroslava Breach and Javier Valdez, two of the more than 100 reporters murdered since 2000 in one of the world’s most dangerous countries for the press. (see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2018/01/05/front-lines-2017-report-confirms-worst-expectation-over-300-hrds-killed/)
Its aim is “to recognize the careers of Mexican journalists who have distinguished themselves in defending human rights,” said Giancarlo Summa, director of the United Nations Information Center in Mexico.
Valdez, an award-winning journalist who covered Mexico’s powerful drug cartels, was gunned down last May in broad daylight outside the offices of Riodoce, the newspaper he co-founded in Culiacan, the capital of his native Sinaloa state. He was also a long-time AFP collaborator.
Miroslava Breach, a correspondent for Mexican daily La Jornada in the state of Chihuahua, on the US border, was a celebrated investigative journalist known for hard-hitting reports on links between politicians and organized crime. She was shot dead in broad daylight last March as she drove her son to school.
The annual prize is also co-sponsored by UNESCO, the Ibero-American University and the French embassy in Mexico. The first edition will be awarded on May 3 in Mexico City. The winner will receive a grant and a trip to France to take part in a series of events on free speech.
(Breach and Valdez were among at least 11 journalists murdered in Mexico last year, making it the deadliest country in the world for the press after Syria, according to watchdog group Reporters Without Borders. The latest murder came just Wednesday, when journalist Leobardo Vazquez was gunned down outside his house in Veracruz state — the second killed in 2018.)
“There is no indication these crimes are going to stop. Let’s hope this prize will help all the country’s brave journalists keep up the fight,” Valdez’s widow, Griselda Triana, said at the launch of the award.
This is a national award. There are many awards for journalists and for freedom of expression at the international level, see: http://trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/
https://www.yahoo.com/news/un-afp-launch-prize-honor-slain-mexican-journalists-034757524.html
Posted in awards, Human Rights Defenders, UN | 4 Comments »
Tags: AFP, awards, Breach-Valdez Prize, digest of human rights awards, freedom of expression, Javier Valdez, journalists, killings, Leobardo Vazquez, Mexico, Miroslava Breach, national award
March 24, 2017
Interesting example of how governments (here the EU) can work together to protect human rights defenders in a specific country (here Uganda). Since a few years there is an annual EU HRD Award to recognise and honour the achievements of an individual Human Rights Defender active in Uganda.
EU Heads of mission with the 2016 EU Human Rights Defender Award recipient, Robert Sempala in May 2016.
Now the British High Commission in Kampala, together with other European Union member states represented in Uganda, is inviting nominations for the 2017 EU Human Rights Defenders Award. The broad range of activities carried out by HRDs can include the following:
- documenting human rights violations;
- seeking remedies for victims of human rights violations through the provision of legal, psychological, medical or other support;
- combating the culture of impunity which can hide systematic and repeated breaches of human rights and fundamental freedoms;
- mainstreaming a human rights culture, and transmitting information about HRDs at the national, regional and international levels;
- advocacy for the respect of human rights.
Nominations should be sent by e-mail to: Kampala.Reception@fco.gov.uk. Nominations should be a maximum of one page in length, and should use the following nomination form (MS Word Document, 51.5KB). The deadline for nominations is 14 April 2017. The winner will be announced on 25 May 2017 at a ceremony hosted by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Uganda.
Source: 2017 EU Human Rights Defenders Award: Call for nominations – GOV.UK
Posted in awards, EU, human rights, Human Rights Defenders | 1 Comment »
Tags: call for nominations, EU, human rights awards, Human Rights Defenders, national award, Netherlands, Robert Sempala, Uganda, UK
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 