share information on human rights defenders, with special focus on human rights awards and laureates
In the series “10 December, 10 Defenders” OMCT published on 4 December 2015 the profile of Emma Bolshia Bravo who helps Bolivian victims recover from torture and its second trauma, silence.
“Considering the magnitude of the psychological effects on the victim, the fear it generates within society, and the traumas transmitted to the following generations, torture causes irreparable damage,” says Emma Bolshia Bravo. “That’s why prevention of torture is crucial.” Read the rest of this entry »
In the series “10 December, 10 Defenders” [https://thoolen.wordpress.com/2015/12/01/10-december-10-defenders-profiles-of-human-rights-defenders-against-torture/]the OMCT publishes today the case of “Benin: Meet Norbert: Better protecting children to break Benin’s cycle of violence“. “Violence is the first inheritance of a child born within a violent family,” says Norbert Fanou-Ako. As director of a non-governmental organization called Solidarity for Children in Africa and the World (ESAM) he is trying to break Benin’s vicious cycle of violence. The violence deeply engrained in this country starts at home and in school with commonplace whipping, caning, slapping and other uses of ill-treatment against children and then extends to regular beatings to force confessions out of suspected juvenile delinquents at police stations. Read the rest of this entry »
“Torture is certainly practised in all societies, but the problem in Libya is the frequency of its occurrence,” explains Salah Abu Khazam, who founded and heads the Libyan Network for Legal Aid. “That’s because the Government is only concerned with its own security.” This comes from OMCT’s profile “Libya: Meet Salah: Keeping hope for redress in the absence of a State, amid a civil war“.
Salah doesn’t have it easy. He works in a country with two governments, non-existent police force, a defunct judicial system and no rule of law, where human rights defenders like him, prime targets of scores of armed groups, regularly get kidnapped or killed. Two volunteer human rights lawyers working for his organization were directly threatened, and chances are he himself is on the black list for promoting democratic ideals, gender equality, or any value opposed to those upheld by Islamist armed groups. Yet, he still gets up every morning thinking that Libya is going to become a better place: “The day will come when the culprits will be held accountable for their crimes and victims will receive reparation,”.
While most of his peers are in exile, Salah, 31, holds onto his country. He is proud to say he has rescued two people from death under torture, and a third one from a death sentence for having stolen a military vehicle. He is convinced no one can enjoy any wellbeing or lead a proper life while such violations are tolerated by the social and political system, until the universal values of human rights are enforced in Libya. One has to say, though, that the light at the end of the tunnel still seems very far at this stage.
After the 2011 attacks and uprising that led to the downfall of the Qadhafi regime after 24 years of dictatorship, many Libyan intellectuals and lawyers such as Salah engaged in the defence of human rights. With the backing of international NGOs including OMCT, Amnesty International, and the Red Cross a number of local networks and civil society organizations sprung up to better protect citizens from routine human rights violations. Yet this hopeful period of building up democratic institutions and restoring civil rights was short-lived as another wave of widespread violence overtook the country, home to the world’s 10th-largest oil-reserves, as numerous belligerents fuelled political, racial, ethnic, religious and interregional conflicts.
The country has been divided since June 2014, when a number of factions refused to accept the legislative election results and the establishment of a new Parliament, leaving Libya with two Governments: one recognized by the international community based in al-Bayda, and another loyal to the former General National Congress based in Tripoli. To make things worse, many regions have ties to Islamist groups while other areas are self-governing, and rival armed groups have spread across the territory, creating additional lines of fracture.
The result was complete chaos, with a collapse of state institutions and deteriorating economic, social and health conditions, which forced the European Union and United Nations Support Mission to Libya to leave the country. The escalation of violence since in August 2014 – when Islamist militias took over Tripoli and its civilian airport – was so ferocious that the UN Security Council called for the application of sanctions against violators of humanitarian and human rights law. The violence also led to at least 400,000 internally displaced Libyans and to hundreds of thousands migrant workers fleeing the country.
It is in this improbable context that Salah’s organization, founded in 2014 with OMCT’s help, has documented 90 torture cases, forced disappearances, arbitrary detentions and abuses. It has filed 15 complaints with local courts for torture, detention and extra-judiciary executions. It is working with other partners on how to use international mechanisms to seek redress for victims of torture in the face of an incompetent national judicial system. Society must free itself from passivity and dependence and participate collectively to demand the respect of its rights,” explains Salah.
– By Lori Brumat in Geneva
In the series Human Rights Defenders against Torture, OMCT published on 7 December “Nicaragua: Meet Vilma: Still not ready to stop fighting against torture in Nicaragua”. Vilma Núñez de Escorcia , 77, has been heading the Centro Nicaragüense de Derechos Humanos (CENIDH) for the past quarter of a century, assisting civil society’s underprivileged populations and building the capacity to protect and promote human rights. The first female magistrate in Nicaragua appointed Vice-President of the Supreme Court from 1979 to 1987, Vilma pegs her commitment to fighting for justice to the fact that she was born outside marriage - a terrible thing at that time, which meant that she was barred from the best religious secondary school and could not inherit as much as each of her “legitimate” siblings. She is now thankful for what she then considered as a “misfortune” as it made her realize how the legal system treated people differently. This realization made her want to train as a lawyer specializing in human rights and penal law. “I didn’t’ want anyone else to suffer discrimination so I chose to become a lawyer, to understand and stop it,” she explains.
She remembers her first encounter with torture Read the rest of this entry »
A new publication “Gendering Documentation: A Manual for and about Women Human Rights Defenders” (http://www.omct.org/files/2015/12/23505/gen_doc_manual_final.pdf) has come out to mark International Women Human Rights Defender Day (29 November) and International Human Rights Day (10 December). It has been produced by the Women Human Rights Defenders International Coalition. The manual will be posted in pdf format in coming days on the website of the Women Human Rights Defenders International Coalition: www.defendingwomen-defendingrights.org. 
Gendering Documentation: A Manual For and About Women Human Rights Defenders is designed for use by those who document Read the rest of this entry »
To portray the work of human rights defenders working on the ground to prevent torture, the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) shares profiles of 10 persons between 1 and 10 December, International Human Rights Day.
These stories, such as those of Yavuz in Turkey, Olga in Russia, and Justin in DRC are hosted on OMCT’s website and social media, including the new LinkedIn page, as well as on Facebook and Twitter accounts, starting today. People are encouraged to like and share the posts. I will also highlight some of them in future posts.
For last year’s campaign see: https://thoolen.wordpress.com/2014/11/26/omct-launches-again-its-10-days-campaign-for-and-with-human-rights-defenders/
Yesterday I reported on Human Rights Watch honoring Yara Bader as the representative of the Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression. Now I am catching up on the release of her husband and the founder of the Centre, Mazen Darwish, after more than three years in jail. A verdict in his case is expected later this month. Darwish was arrested, along with two colleagues, in February 2012 during a raid. Hussein Ghreir and Hani al-Zaitani were freed last month (17 July and 18 July 2015, respectively) as part of an amnesty that was to have included Darwish, but his release was delayed.
Many NGOs (i.a. Frontline, the Observatory, AI and HRW) and Governments have welcomed the release but warn that Mazen Darwish, and his colleagues Hussein Ghrer and Hani al-Zaitani, have been charged with “publicising terrorist acts” and are still to be tried before the Syrian Anti-Terrorism Court. They invariably call for all charges against them to be dropped. “Mazen, Hussein and Hani are not terrorists, they are human rights defenders,” FIDH President Karim Lahidji said “All charges against them must be dropped immediately”. “We urge the Syrian Anti-Terrorism Court to acquit them during the verdict hearing on August 31, as their judicial harassment has only been aimed at sanctioning their human rights activities”, OMCT Secretary General Gerald Staberock concluded.
[On May 15, 2013, in its Resolution 67/262, the UN General Assembly called for the release of the three defenders. In January 2014, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention also found that the three defenders had been arbitrarily deprived of their liberty due to their human rights activities and called for their immediate release. Finally, UN Security Council Resolution 2139, adopted on February 22, 2014, also demanded the release of all arbitrarily detained people in Syria.]
Syria: Finally free, Mazen Darwish must now be acquitted.
https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/mazendarwish
http://tvnewsroom.org/newslines/world/syria-releases-award-winning-activist-mazen-darwish-79643/
Further to my post today on Nabeel Rajab [https://thoolen.wordpress.com/2015/07/08/bahrain-freenabeel-campaign-more-urgent-than-ever-in-view-of-resumption-usa-security-assistance/], I draw attention to the recent report by the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders (FIDH/OMCT) “Bahrain: Publication of an International Mission Report: Imprisonment, torture and statelessness: The darkening reality of human rights defenders in Bahrain”.
 |
Report OBS Bahrain_English 44 pages / 870 KB |
Human rights defenders in Bahrain are operating in a shrinking space, says the Observatory in a report published on 25 June 2015. The report documents the judicial harassment of 11 human rights defenders including lawyers, teachers, doctors or bloggers. All have suffered or been threatened with imprisonment, torture or statelessness as a consequence of their activities in defense of human rights. Read the rest of this entry »
On 15 June 2015, 0ver 200 human rights NGOs urge the Democratic Republic of Congo to show respect for freedom of expression and assembly by freeing the “Filimbi activists“. Expression, Assembly The two activists were arrested three months ago, on 15 March during a pro-democracy youth workshop in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Fred Bauma and Yves Makwambala were arrested at the workshop organized to launch “Filimbi,” a platform to encourage Congolese youth to peacefully and responsibly perform their civic duties. Read the rest of this entry »
OMCT and FIDH (within the framework of the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders) in cooperation with the ISHR organise on 16 June (16:00-17:30, room XXII, Palais des Nations – Geneva) a side event on Attacks and Reprisals against Human Rights Defenders, focusing on the issue of reprisals and accountability. As readers know by now, I believe that this is the topic which the human rights movement HAS TO TAKE more serious lest all progress of the last decades will be lost. My blog contains quite a few posts on reprisals (https://thoolen.wordpress.com/tag/reprisals/), but the key one is: https://thoolen.wordpress.com/2014/03/13/zero-tolerance-for-states-that-take-reprisals-against-hrds-lets-up-the-ante/.
The objectives of the side event are: Read the rest of this entry »
