Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards

“Art was my existence, my life. Without it, maybe I wouldn’t have survived,” said Kheder Abdulkarim, a Kurdish-Syrian artist based in Germany and former political prisoner, whose work is inspired by his experience of persecution and erasure. He received an honourable mention at the 4^th edition of the International Contest for Minority Artists.

The Contest is an initiative organized jointly by UN Human Rights, Freemuse, Minority Rights Group and the City of Geneva. Since 2024, the contest is also supported by the Centre des Arts of the International School of Geneva, the Loterie Romande, as well as by other donors who prefer to remain anonymous.

Each year, the Contest celebrates minority artists whose work bears witness to struggles for dignity, justice and visibility, forming a cornerstone of UN Human Rights’ efforts to uplift artists as human rights defenders.

The 2025 theme — Belonging, Place and Loss — resonated profoundly with artists around the world whose identities have been shaped by displacement, environmental devastation, structural racism, and generational trauma, generating more than 240 submissions this year.

At the award ceremony, UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, Nada Al-Nashif, reminded the audience of what minority artists reveal to societies.

“Tonight, we celebrate eight minority artists honoured in this edition, the power of art and the vital contribution that minority artists make as they shine a light on human rights struggles across the globe, stories and images that unite and anchor us in a shared humanity,” she said.

Art can be a human rights language, and a catalyst for positive change in societies which may seek to silence minority voices. Claude Cahn, human rights officer at UN Human Rights’ Indigenous Peoples and Minorities Section

For many laureates, art is the only archive that survives war, the only place where memory can remain intact.

Alia Al-Saadi is a Palestinian Syrian dancer and choreographer born a third-generation refugee in Yarmouk Camp, and one of the laureates of the contest’s 4^th edition.

Her performances turn the body into an “archive of destruction,” she said, and “a state of psychological numbness, where prolonged exposure to violence renders shock ineffective.” 

Alia Al-Saadi, a Palestinian-Syrian dancer exploring exile, memory and the body as archive. ©Alia Al-Saadi

Abubakar Moaz, a Sudanese visual artist based in Kenya, won honourable mention and said his visual language emerged from conflict in the Blue Nile and exile in Nairobi.

Abdulkarim, imprisoned for nearly six years in the infamous Saydnaya Prison in Damascus, began sculpting there with scraps of vegetable crates. “I lost seven years of my life,” he said. “But I try to produce something from those years, to rebuild them and more.” 

Emanoel Saravá, an Afro-Indigenous Brazilian visual and photo-performance artist, winner of an honourable mention, treats water as an archive of Black and peripheral suffering through their project Águas Marginais.

“The waters carry the memory of Black and peripheral communities, but they also bear the scars of environmental racism, climate change and neglect,” Saravá said.

Sead Kazanxhiu, a Roma political artist from Albania and laureate of the 4^th edition, rejects narratives that reduce Roma communities to victimhood.

“The Nest”, installation, wood, metallic wire, polyurethane foam and paint by Sead Kazanxhiu, a Roma visual artist whose public installations confront exclusion and reclaim Roma presence. ©Sead Kazanxhiu

“We have been always treated as victims; with my work, I want somehow to change this narrative toward active citizenship with equal rights,” he said. 

https://www.ohchr.org/en/stories/2025/12/minority-artists-transform-loss-resistance-and-belonging