Front Line Defenders has learned with great sadness of the death of human rights defender Rafiq Hajat, who passed on 13 September 2021 of a heart attack. Despite the personal risks, Rafiq Hajat dedicated 20 years of his life to peacefully defending human rights in Malawi.
There is growing concern over how democracy and the rule of law have deteriorated in Nicaragua, bearing important consequences for human rights defenders and society at large. As the presidential family has solidified its grip on Parliament, the Army, the Police and the media, civil society space has steadily narrowed.
My friend Dr Mudawi Ibrahim Adam is in detention again in Khartoum. He was taken by the National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) from the University of Khartoum on 7th December and is being held without access to his lawyer or his family. He has previously been detained on several occasions, for over a month in 2010 and earlier for a total of 18 months in several spells during 2003-2005.
The Standing Rock Sioux tribe's battle for their land has become an international phenomenon. Native Americans and environmental defenders from all over the world have converged on the Dakotas to peacefully protest a massive pipeline project that threatens the lives of indigenous peoples.
“I keep asking: why would they do this?” human rights defender Ladonna Bravebull Allard told Front Line Defenders. She quickly added that the answer is clear:
After leading Front Line Defenders for 15 years, on 6 October 2016 Mary Lawlor announced she was stepping down as Executive Director. In this letter, Mary pays tribute to human rights defenders around the world.
The Irish Times this week ran an opinion piece defending the Northern Ireland Policing Board's training and financial support for Bahraini security forces.
While the current nature of EU foreign policy means it has to be built on a delicate compromise between 28 member states, most observers have felt that it has been excessively – perhaps needlessly? - timid in communicating on issues related to human rights. Human rights, after all, are both a founding value of the EU, so important that they appear in Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union, and one of the most important objectives of its foreign policy (again, enshrined in the Treaty as the second objective after the eradication of poverty).
Today is a national holiday in the United States. Schools, banks, and government buildings are all closed to commemorate the arrival of Christopher Columbus to a land he thought was India. In fact, 1492 marked the year Columbus "discovered" a land already home to almost 20 million indigenous peoples.
Since that day, indigenous communities of the continent have suffered centuries of persecution, massacre, disease, and systemic violations of their rights to land.
Azimjan Askarov is a Kyrgyz HRD working against corruption and for civil and political rights in the country, including for the ethnic minority Uzbek population. He was arrested during the violent clashes in southern Kyrgyzstan in 2010 between ethnic Uzbeks and Kyrgyz, though he had long been targeted by the authorities because of his human rights work. Read more about his persecution on his case history page. Masha Chichtchenkova is Front Line Defenders Protection Coo
