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Human Rights Defender of the Month: Vanessa Tsehaye

Vanessa Tsehaye started her work as a human rights defender (HRD) at an early age: at 16, she founded a high school group in support of imprisoned Eritrean journalist Seyoum Tsehaye. Seven years later, the same diaspora organisation, One Day Seyoum, is one of Eritrea’s leading human rights organisations – spear-headed by the now 23-year old Vanessa. 

The man for whom it was founded, Seyoum, is Vanessa’s uncle. The journalist was arrested in 2001 during a crackdown on critics and non-governmental media. For 19 years now, Seyoum has been a prisoner of conscience, held without trial and under inhumane conditions, like so many others. “The Eritrean situation is very unique. In these past 19 years, very few things have changed for the better, if any,” says Vanessa. “Maybe it’s comparable to North Korea, this situation where opposition and civil society are completely banned and unable to operate within the country. Only people on the outside can mobilize and campaign. It’s very tricky, because it’s much easier to mobilize people within a country to organize mass protests.”

The Eritrean situation is very unique. In these past 19 years, very few things have changed for the better, if any. Maybe it’s comparable to North Korea, this situation where opposition and civil society are completely banned and unable to operate within the country. Only people on the outside can mobilise and campaign. It’s very tricky, because it’s much easier to mobilise people within a country to organise mass protests.

Yet, One Day Seyoum has evolved from a Swedish high school group to one of the leading Eritrean human rights organisations. “We can’t wait for things to open in Eritrea to start. There is value in doing things from outside the country as well,” says Vanessa. “Building capacity outside of the country is the most important thing we can do.”

One Day Seyoum’s main aim is to raise awareness about human rights violations in Eritrea and mobilise people to get involved. Recently, One Day Seyoum called on the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) to extend the mandate of the UN Special Rapporteur on Eritrea and maintain its scrutiny of the human rights situation in the country, together with DefendDefenders and partners. This follows years of international advocacy. In March 2019, the HRC invited Vanessa to speak on a panel during a debate on Eritrea’s human rights situation.

Currently, One Day Seyoum is working on different initiatives, including a refugee clinic supporting Eritrean refugees worldwide and campaigns on Eritrean issues targeting institutions or individuals. They will also soon launch a media channel to inform about the situation in Eritrea, targeted at non-Eritreans, Eritreans born in the diaspora and Eritreans born after independence. Especially the younger generation – those born after Eritrean independence in 1991 – often only have limited knowledge of their own country’s history. “This is a generation that knows barely anything about what happened with the democracy movement – that was killed very quickly in 2001 – or generally about the nature of the Eritrean regime outside of their own experiences. Their generation was deprived of that, because of the regime’s extreme censorship,” Vanessa says.

People are very scared to speak out against the Eritrean government. They are scared of the consequences for their families back home, but also of losing their position in the exiled community. The government has quite a strong grip on local communities across the world. Even if you’re not in Eritrea, you can still feel this grip, and you can get isolated.

The government’s power reaches far beyond the borders of Eritrea. Even in the diaspora, Vanessa is regularly confronted with online hate speech on social media because of her human rights work. These hate messages often come in waves, making it likely they are part of a larger strategy, though it is unclear who is behind them. It could be the Eritrean government, but it could also be other exiled Eritreans. “People are very scared to speak out against the Eritrean government. They are scared of the consequences for their families back home, but also of losing their position in the exiled community. The government has quite a strong grip on local communities across the world. Even if you’re not in Eritrea, you can still feel this grip, and you can get isolated,” Vanessa explains.

But the severity of the situation keeps Vanessa going: “I was lucky to be born outside of Eritrea, the situation of Eritreans within the country and of those who are fleeing is just unbearable. I really feel like the least I can do is raise my voice and try to help.”

See more HRDs of the Month

Human Rights Defender of the month: 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.

Human Rights Defender of the month: 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.

Human Rights Defender of the month: 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.

Human Rights Defender of the month: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.

Human Rights Defender of the month: 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.

Human Rights Defender of the month: 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.

Human Rights Defender of the month: 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.

Human Rights Defender of the month: 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.

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