Newsletters Archive
Page 4 of 8 (94 newsletters)
Updates from October 2022
Dear Friends, October is usually a busy month for us at DefendDefenders, signaling the beginning of the last quarter of the year. Early in the month, we concluded participation in the 51st session of the UN Human Rights Council(HRC51), which lasted from 12 September – 7 October. The session was critical in maintaining scrutiny of […]
Updates from September 2022
Dear Colleagues, Globally, September has been an eventful month, with world leaders convening in New York for the 77th session of the UN General Assembly to rally international action on the world’s most pressing issues, from the Russian war in Ukraine, to the conflict in Ethiopia’s region of Tigray, among others. Most of the month […]
Updates from August 2022
Dear Friends, Dear friends, Greetings from DefendDefenders and AfricanDefenders. I hope you had a productive month of August. Our highlight was the launch of a new Ubuntu Hub City – Cape Verde’s Praia, bringing it to now eight Ubuntu Hub Cities. Human rights defenders (HRDs) in Lusophone Africa can now confidently go about their work […]
Updates from July 2022
Dear Friends, This month, we concluded a busy and productive engagement at the 50th session of the UN Human Rights Council (HRC50), which stretched from 13 June to 8 July. Among others, we successfully advocated for new resolutions on Sudan and Eritrea, ensuring that the human rights situation in both countries remains on the Council’s […]
Updates from June 2022
Dear Colleagues, Greetings from DefendDefenders (East and Horn of Africa Human Rights Defenders Project) and AfricanDefenders (Pan-African Human Rights Defenders Network). I also bring you greetings from the UN Human Rights Council, where, for the first time since the pandemic began, we were able to fully  reconvene for in-person advocacy, at the council’s 50th session […]
Updates from May 2022
Dear friends, Welcome to yet another edition of our newsletter. Internationally, May is recognised as Mental Health Awareness Month. Mental health is a major concern for us because human rights defenders (HRDs), by the very nature of their work often find that they must navigate very precarious environments and challenges to not only sustain their […]
Updates from April 2022
Dear Colleagues, April has been a busy month for us at DefendDefenders. We concluded our participation at the 49th session of the UN human Rights Council (HRC49), where we delivered several oral statements on a number of issues under the Council’s consideration. We are particularly proud of the Council’s final decision of this session – […]
Updates from March 2022
Dear friends, This month, we marked the annual International Women’s Day with a call for the elimination of gender barriers in environmental conservation and the fight against climate change.  The call was the culmination of a month-long campaign dubbed #SheDefends, in which, through a series of interviews with women environmental rights defenders, we showed that […]
Updates from February 2022
Dear Friends, As you already know, in the last weeks of this month, global democracy came under arguably its severest test to date, with Russian aggression against the independent people and Republic of Ukraine. As the international community moved to cobble together an emphatic collective response, we made it clear that the democratic world had […]
Updates from January 2022
Dear friends, The year is already shaping up to be a busy one for us here at DefendDefenders. As we noted in our sub-regional update to the 69 Ordinary session of the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights (ACHPR) in December, the state of human rights in the East and Horn of Africa remains […]
Updates from December 2021
Dear Comrades and Friends, 2021 was a busy year for human rights defenders globally. With conflicts raging in Ethiopia and Sudan, a still fragile transition in Burundi, and far-reaching COVID19-related restrictions in the rest of our focus countries, DefendDefenders had a busy schedule at both the United Nations Human Rights Council and the African Commission […]
Updates from November 2021
November started on a promising note, after the UN Human Rights Council, at our and our colleague civil society organisations’ urging, on 5 November 2021 held a special session to assess the human rights implications of the 25 October military coup in Sudan, and adopted a resolution reinstating Sudan on the council’s agenda.