HRD of the Month - DefendDefenders

May 2025

Pacifique Nininahazwe

“I came to know DefendDefenders during the second half of 2009. In November that year, they supported my evacuation and temporary relocation abroad. It was a very difficult period for FORSC and for me. This organisation taught me, and many other HRDs in Burundi, the very concept of a human rights defender, and everything related to their physical and digital security.”

April 2025

Dr. Zahara Nampewo

Dr. Zahara Nampewo is a prominent Ugandan human rights lawyer, academic, and gender justice advocate with over two decades of experience in legal education, public interest litigation, and social justice. She currently serves as the Deputy Principal at the School of Law, Makerere University, and has been the Treasurer on the Board of DefendDefenders since 2019.

March 2025

Andrews Kananga

Andrews Kananga’s long-standing relationship with DefendDefenders began in 2009, when he met Executive Director Hassan Shire and was invited to his first strategic meeting in Kampala, Uganda. That meeting marked the start of a strong collaboration rooted in a shared commitment to advancing human rights in the region. Over the years, Andrews has participated in numerous trainings and strategic convenings organised by DefendDefenders, deepening his expertise in areas such as human rights protection, digital security, and advocacy. In 2012, he was elected by Rwandan human rights defenders to establish and lead the Rwanda Human Rights Defenders Network (RHRDN), a member of the East and Horn of Africa Human Rights Defenders Network. As the Chairperson, he has worked closely with DefendDefenders on protection initiatives, needs assessments, and support for HRDs from both Rwanda and Burundi. In 2019, Andrew was recognised by DefendDefenders for his consistent contribution to the regional human rights movement.

February 2025

Margaret Sekaggya

Margaret Sekaggya’s legacy as a champion of human rights in Uganda is deeply intertwined with the country’s journey toward justice and equality for all. In 2005, she was the Chief Guest at DefendDefenders’ inaugural conference, attending in her capacity as Chairperson of the Uganda Human Rights Commission. Over the past two decades, she has closely collaborated with DefendDefenders, offering guidance to human rights defenders (HRDs) and helping them navigate the use of the international mechanisms in their advocacy. Her unwavering dedication has earned her the title of “Mother of Human Rights” in Uganda, a recognition she humbly embraces. Born into a family of ten, Margaret was raised in a home where boys and girls shared the same responsibilities, despite societal norms that often-limited girls’ roles. In the early 1960s, she joined Old Kampala for secondary school, shortly after it had become a mixed-gender and multiracial institution. While students adapted, some teachers resisted the change, including one Indian teacher who regularly barred African students from entering class if they were late while allowing others in. Margaret decided to challenge this unfair treatment by arriving late one day. As expected, the teacher denied her entry, but she walked in and took her seat anyway. Upset, the teacher took her to the headmaster, Mr. R.P. Jones, who was known for his fairness. After hearing both sides, he ruled in Margaret’s favour, allowing her to return to class. She recalls returning triumphantly, a small but significant victory against discrimination. “The teacher never did it again to anyone. That was the moment I realised that sometimes you have to stand up against injustice and discrimination, and it pays off. Eventually, you get fair treatment.” Later, for her university education, she chose to pursue law at Makerere University. In her class of 30 students, only five were women, while the rest were men. The gender imbalance was not just numerical—it was also reflected in attitudes. One male student frequently taunted and demeaned Margaret and the other four women. Refusing to tolerate such behaviour, she decided to stand her ground.

January 2025

Osman Hummaida

Osman Hummaida, born in 1960, emerged as a fearless human rights defender in this challenging environment, dedicating his life to exposing human rights violations and seeking justice for victims. His human rights activism began during his time at the University of Khartoum, where he was a politically active student. After graduating, he worked at the Ministry of Finance in the early 1990s. While there, he was part of a group of civil servants mobilising others to lay down their tools in protest against the government’s repression of civil society organisations and opposition party members. When the government got wind of the upcoming protest, Osman was arrested, detained, and tortured in a secret detention center, often referred to as a “ghost house.” Following his release, he was dismissed from his job. In 1993, he fled to the United Kingdom, where he continued his work, focusing on supporting torture survivors and advocating for human rights in Sudan. He joined the Sudanese Group for Victims of Torture (SGVT), quickly rising to become its Executive Director. SGVT provided medical and psychosocial support to hundreds of Sudanese torture survivors in Sudan and outside Sudan, collaborating with institutions such as the El-Nadeem Centre in Cairo. The organisation published reports and raised international awareness about human rights violations in Sudan. Later, SGVT rebranded as the Sudan Organisation Against Torture (SOAT). Under his leadership, SOAT expanded its work, providing critical medical and legal support to victims while amplifying their voices on international platforms.

December 2024

Somaia Musa Adam Haran

Somaia was born and raised in Dito village in Gereida locality, South Darfur State, Sudan—a community where socio-cultural norms often dictate the lives of young girls. These norms allow parents to marry off girls as young as 10 years old, depriving them of basic rights such as education. At the age of 16, Somaia was married to her 28-year-old cousin, forcing her to drop out of school to focus on her marital obligations. However, Somaia’s determination to complete her education never wavered. She was deeply inspired by stories related to studying that she heard from her high school friends and longed to return to her studies. Early in her marriage, she began asking for a divorce so she could pursue her education—a request met with strong resistance. For three years, the elders and the village council opposed her decision, warning her, “If we grant you this divorce, it will teach your sisters in the family that divorce is an option.” At 19, Somaia successfully ended her marriage and set her sights on completing her education. She pursued her studies from secondary school to university and eventually postgraduate studies, relying on scholarships and the support of kind-hearted individuals who helped fund her journey. Without the backing of most of her family members, her path was fraught with challenges, but it was deeply rewarding. Her perseverance was tested by a combination of social barriers and discriminatory state policies that hindered women and girls’ access to education. This turning point marked the beginning of Somaia’s journey as a human rights defender. Her lived experiences fueled her passion to fight for the rights of girls and women, ensuring they are not forced into the same struggles she faced. She began her advocacy by championing the rights of marginalised women and girls, focusing on education, ending child marriages, access to information, and promoting women’s participation in politics. In Somaia’s view, a challenging environment like Darfur requires strong advocacy for women’s rights to promote education both as a fundamental right and as a powerful tool for empowerment. “Completing education for girls is vital because it is the pathway to social, economic, political, and cultural empowerment. Education equips individuals with the tools to participate in diverse spaces, connect issues, understand contexts, and assert their rights.” – Somaia Musa Adam

November 2024

Rachael Mwikali

Born and raised in the Mathare slum, Rachael faced numerous challenges growing up, particularly as a young girl navigating a patriarchal society that often overlooked her rights and well-being. These early experiences of violence and discrimination, including sexual and emotional abuse, shaped her activism and her determination to fight for justice. “Growing up as a girl, having access to basic needs was a challenge. At one point, I was engaged in a relationship with someone older than me, who took advantage of me in multiple ways. This had a profound effect on my childhood and development. It led me to embrace feminism and activism because I realized that this wasn’t just a personal issue, but a systemic one affecting many girls around me. No one was giving us a platform to speak out or condemning what was happening.” – Rachael Mwikali

October 2024

Peace Monica Pimer

Peace Monica Pimer is the Executive Director of the Nile Girls Forum, an organisation focused on empowering young women through leadership, governance, sexual and reproductive health, and economic development. Born and raised in Zombo, Uganda, Peace is a committed environmental human rights defender, integrating climate action into her work. She advocates for the inclusion of women and girls in environmental decision-making, highlighting the link between environmental protection and human rights. Through her leadership, Peace continues to drive change, ensuring the voices of vulnerable communities are central to climate action and environmental justice. The Covid-19 pandemic, which confined many to their homes during the global lockdown in 2020, marked a turning point in Peace Pimer’s activism. As people stayed indoors, the world experienced cleaner air and healthier environments due to reduced carbon emissions from cars and factories. This period of reflection heightened Peace’s awareness of the importance of biodiversity and environmental conservation, leading to a pivotal shift in her focus.

September 2024

Daniel Ngendakumana

Daniel is a committed slam poet and human rights defender, using his powerful words to advocate for change in his home country, Burundi. Living in exile since 2015, Daniel has turned to poetry as a medium for raising awareness about the struggles his country faces, particularly focusing on themes like patriotism, civic values, and the preservation of Burundian culture. On 19 November 2015, Daniel faced the difficult decision to leave his home country, Burundi. At that time, he was in the final year of his undergraduate studies in health sciences, specialising in midwifery at the National Institute of Public Health. With only four months of internship left to complete his bachelor’s degree, Daniel was arrested and subjected to intense interrogation at a rural hospital where he was interning. Fearing for his safety, he decided to flee. His journey spanned nine days, during which he crossed through three countries before finally settling in his host country. He left behind his father, brother, and sister, who remain in Burundi to this day.

August 2024

Iman Ahmed Abdikarin

Iman Ahmed Abdikarin was born in Italy on 12 May 1997 and returned to Mogadishu, Somalia in 1999. However, the situation in Mogadishu at the time was dire due to the chaos and violence that had plagued the country since the collapse of its central government in 1991. The civil war, which began with the ousting of President Siad Barre, created a power vacuum and intense clan-based warfare. The country was divided into various fiefdoms controlled by warlords, with no effective central authority to govern. Civilians, like Iman and her mother, faced constant threats to their safety, including bombings, gunfights, and looting.

July 2024

Peter Michael Madeleka

For four years, Peter Michael Madeleka built a career as a corporate lawyer, deeply engrossed in the intricacies of corporate legal work. Human rights law was far from his focus—until a life-altering event in 2019 changed everything. In 2019, Peter was unjustly arrested and charged with money laundering, leading to nearly two years of incarceration with his wife, Jamila Ilomo. Peter was wrongfully convicted due to a coerced plea bargain with the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP). He later petitioned the High Court of and the court ruled in his favor, overturning the conviction and recognizing the illegality of the plea bargain. This pivotal case inspired Peter to transition from corporate law to human rights advocacy, focusing on justice and protecting others’ rights.

June 2024

Elizabeth Chyrum

Elizabeth Chyrum, also known as Elsa Chyrum, is an Eritrean human rights activist based in the United Kingdom (UK). For the past 26 years, she has been instrumental in raising awareness about the human rights abuses faced by Eritreans, including arbitrary detention, torture, and forced conscription, both within Eritrea and among Eritrean refugees and migrants.

May 2024

Asmahan Abulsalam

As a child, Asmahan’s childhood was scarred by the violent practice of female genital mutilation (FGM), then popular in Somali culture. Girls as young as seven years were subjected to the violent practice often against their will, and young Asmahan was revolted by it. “I witnessed very young girls aged between seven and ten years undergoing this harmful practice (FGM), conducted using rudimentary tools, which usually left long effects on these girls’ bodies. By all intents, it was a violation of both their bodies and their rights, and even at that early age, it didn’t sit well with me,” she says. As she grew up, the social injustices against women would only grow more evident. In addition to FGM, girls were rarely taken to school. Instead, child marriages were frequent, and young girls would be married off before their first teenage birthdays, often to older men, where they would go on to lead lives blighted by systemic socio-cultural discrimination and abuse.

April 2024

Apollo Mukasa

Apollo Mukasa’s journey into activism is deeply rooted in his commitment to advocate for the rights of persons with disabilities (PWDs). As the Executive Director of Uganda National Action on Physical Disability (UNAPD), Apollo is a driving force behind initiatives aimed at combating discrimination among PWDs. UNAPD was established in 1998 as a platform for voicing concerns of persons with physical disabilities to realise a barrier free environment where they can enjoy their rights to the fullest.

March 2024

Leon Ntakiyiruta

As a child, Leon wanted to be a magistrate – whom he saw as agents of justice. Born in 1983 in Burundi’s Southern province, he came of age at a time of great social and political upheaval in the East African country. In 1993 when Leon was barely 10, Burundi was besieged by a civil war that would last for the next 12 years until 2005, characterized by indiscriminate violence and gross human rights abuses in which over 300,000 people are estimated to have died.In 2012, still struggling to find her footing in Kampala, Aida was introduced to DefendDefenders, where she was introduced to the organisation’s resource center, and assured, it (the center) would be at her disposal whenever she needed to use it.

February 2024

Aida Musa

In August 2011, Aida crossed into Uganda, pregnant, and barely able to communicate in another language other than Arabic. The transition was a difficult one, she says: “It was my first-time outside Sudan, and yet I did not know any other language. The first months were very difficult.” In 2012, still struggling to find her footing in Kampala, Aida was introduced to DefendDefenders, where she was introduced to the organisation’s resource center, and assured, it (the center) would be at her disposal whenever she needed to use it.

January 2024

Pamela Angwench Judith

For most of her life, Pamela Angwech’s existence has always been a defiant and simultaneous act of survival and resistance. In 1976 when she was born, the anti-Amin movement was gathering pace, and her family was one of the earliest victims of the then dictatorship’s reprisals in Northern Uganda. Her father, a passionate educationist in Kitgum district was one of the most vocal critics of the dictatorship’s human rights excesses, which made him an obvious target of the state’s marauding vigilantes.

December 2023

Joseph Oleshangay

As a human rights lawyer and advocate with the High Court of the United Republic of Tanzania, Joseph Moses Oleshangay spends most of his time crossing from one court to another, litigating human rights cases, some with life-altering implications for ordinary people. It is a monumental responsibility, one he never envisaged growing up. As a young boy born into a Maasai household in northern Tanzania, his entire childhood revolved around cattle: “Our entire livelihood revolved around cattle. As a child, the main preoccupation was to tend to cows, and my formative years were spent grazing cattle around Endulen. It a simple lifestyle,” he says.

November 2023

Julia Onyoti

The situation of South Sudan’s women and girls remains one of those enduring blights on the country’s conscience. The country retains the unenviable reputation of having the world’s highest maternal mortality rate, and at 51.5%, one of the highest cases of child marriages. It is even worse with gender-based violence(GBV): A 2019 study by UNICEF found that one in every two South Sudan women have experienced intimate partner violence, while a recent UN study, alarmed at the widespread nature of conflict-related sexual violence in the country, in which women are tread as “spoils of war” described it as “a hellish existence for women and girls.

October 2023

Shima Bhare

Shima Bhare Abdalla has never known the luxury and comfort of a stable and safe existence inside her country’s borders. When she was 11, her village was attacked and razed to the ground, sending her family and entire neighborhood scattering into an internally displaced People’s Camp, at the start of the Darfur civil war. That was in 2002. Shima and her family relocated into Kalma refugee camp in Southern Darfur, where, alongside over 100,000 other displaced persons, they had to forge out a living, under the watch and benevolence of the United Nations – African Union Hybrid Operation in Darfur, known as UNAMID. It is here that Shima’s human rights consciousness came to life. She enthusiastically embraced whatever little education she could access under the auspices of the humanitarian agencies operating in the camp, to be able to tell the story of her people’s plight.

September 2023

Martial Pa’nucci

Martial Pa’nucci is a child of what is fondly known as Africa’s second liberation. In 1990 when he was born, the Republic of Congo, like many other countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, was undergoing a transition from one-party rule to multi-party democracy, following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Yet developments in ordinary people’s lives were not as optimistic. Pa’nucci was born in one of Brazzaville’s ghettos to a polygamous family of two mothers and 19 siblings, where survival was a daily exercise in courage. When he was two, his father died, followed in quick succession by many of his siblings. Pa’nucci did not start school until he was nine, and he had to do odd jobs – from barbering to plumbing to earn his stay there, lest he dropped out like many of his peers.

August 2023

Veronica Almedom

Veronica Almedom is a poster child of successful immigration. A duo Eritrean and Swiss citizen, she was born in Italy, and grew up in Switzerland where she permanently resides. Her parents are some of the earliest victims of Eritrea’s cycles of violence. When Eritrea’s war of independence peaked in the early 1980s, they escaped the country as unaccompanied minors, wandering through Sudan, Saudi Arabia, before making the hazard journey across the Mediterranean into Europe. There, they crossed first to Italy, and finally, to Switzerland, where they settled first as refugees, and later, as permanent residents.

July 2023

Omar Faruk Osman

Omar Faruk’s career, and the passion that drove it, were the product of his circumstances. He was born in 1976, in the first of strong man Mohamed Siad Barre’s two-decade rule over Somalia, which was characterized by gross rights abuses and barely existent civic space. He came of age in the 90s when those abuses and rights violations were peaking, as his country was engulfed by a ruinous civil war following the collapse of the Siad Barre dictatorship.

June 2023

Rita Kahsay

When the Ethiopian Federal Government representatives and those of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) signed a peace agreement in Pretoria, in November last year, the two parties were hailed for ending arguably the deadliest conflict of the 21st century, in which over 600,000 people had died. But long before the negotiators for peace got around to an agreement, there were many other unsung heroes, who, through individual and collective efforts helped sustain the world’s gaze on the dire situation in Tigray, despite the Ethiopian Government’s determined efforts to hush it up.