On May 30, 2017, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi signed 87 highly punitive articles comprising the NGO Law. The law further restricts the operations of Egypt’s 47,000 civil society organizations (CSOs), which are now required to receive permission from the government to conduct all of their activities. The law impedes civil society’s right to access…
On June 6, 2017, the office of the UNSR for freedom peaceful assembly and association launched FOAA Online – an online portal of user-friendly legal arguments for civil society activists who are fighting to defend those rights. The legal strategies have been aggregated from existing international human rights law, international treaty bodies, and regional courts…
Venezuela: On May 23, 2017, Venezuelan activist, Antonietta Ledezma, spoke at the Oslo Freedom Forum, a global human rights conference, where she advocated for the release of all Venezuelan political prisoners. Ledezma explained that Venezuela is “going through the cruelest dictatorship of [its] history,” and has witnessed a complete “criminalization of politics.” Ledezma is one…
On May 9, 2017, Hassan Shire, the Executive Director of the East and Horn of Africa Human Rights Defenders Project (DefendDefenders), addressed the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights and encouraged them to play a stronger role in protecting human rights on the continent. Shire drew attention to a number of recent human rights…