Human Rights Defender of the month:Mary Pais Da Silva

On 17 February 2023, in Ethiopia’s rustic resort of Bishoftu, more than 5000Km from her homeland,  Mary Da Silva was announced winner of the 2023 AfricanDefenders Shield Award, in the presence of hundreds of colleague human rights defenders from 36 African countries.  It was a fitting validation for the Eswatini human rights lawyer, whose sense of empathy and sensitivity to injustice has been a defining hallmark of her career.       

Born 45 years ago in Lubombo, eastern Eswatini, the last of 4 siblings, Mary attributes her values to her upbringing. Although she was born in Eswatini, her parents are originally from Mozambique, and only relocated to eSwatini at the start of the Mozambican civil war that lasted between 1977-1992, which ravaged families and displaced many others. As one of the earliest to escape and settle in Eswatini, Mary’s family shouldered the responsibility of being a gateway for many other Mozambicans escaping the violence in their country for a more peaceful and stable livelihood in Southern Africa. This experience was illuminating for Mary:      

“Everyone was welcome in our home. Several times, we had to host people staying over for long periods of time as they tried to start all over again, having lost everything in the civil war back home. They would be in so much anguish, and we were required to go out of our way to make their transition as less distressing as possible. So I grew up with a keen sensitivity to injustice and people’s pain, regardless of who they were or where they were coming from. I was raised to see everybody as a human being first, with the same needs,” she says.

That passion for justice would drive her to study law for her undergraduate studies at the University of Eswatini, from which she was admitted to the Eswatini bar in 2003. Once in practice however, the idealistic promise of law as a tool for justice soon clashed with the cynical reality in her country, when she realized that justice was a product to be afforded, not a service available to all.

“I realized that the law only worked for those who could afford a lawyer, and that justice remained firmly out of reach for the majority poor. This was dispiriting, and I could not in good conscience continue to practice commercial law, serving a minority in a country where the majority remained helpless, “she says.

Mary then decided to prioritise public interest cases, mostly about women and children’s rights issues, serving a clientele that for the most part could not afford to pay for her services. Here, she mostly handled cases of women seeking divorces from their abusive partners, child-support for abandoned children, or seeking to enforce their rights to land. It is in this space that she met the now deceased Thulani Maseko, a fellow human rights lawyer and passionate advocate for justice, who invited her to join a network of likeminded human rights lawyers called Lawyers for human rights. 

Mary eventually joined the Lawyers for Human Rights team in 2012, and together with colleagues, decided to use their platform to wholly advance the cause of human rights. By then, however, she was already a marked attorney. At the time, she was a leading attorney in case where three Eswatini youth who were charged with terrorism for allegedly petrol bombing houses belonging to two members of parliament and a senior police officer, for which she was constantly trailed and threatened. The previous year, in 2011, she was one of the prominent figures behind the lawyers’ boycott of the country’s courts protesting the judiciary’s lack of independence.

“This made my litigation work with Lawyers for Human Rights difficult,” she says, adding, “I was losing all my cases, not because I was not competent, but because I was the ‘wrong’ attorney. I had become a target not only for the government, but also eSwatini’s then-chief justice, whose resignation we had called for in the court boycott. So, I thought, I am doing an injustice to my clients to persist in practice, when the courts are already biased against me.”

Frustrated with litigation, Mary decided to withdraw and focus all her energies to fulltime human rights advocacy and to pursue a safe working environment for human rights defenders.

In 2021, Mary was shot at as she left court where two members of parliament were being charged with subversion for their role in the students’ protests demanding for parliamentary democracy in eSwatini that rocked the country in June that year. She escaped unhurt, but it was the murder, in cold blood, of her comrade and friend, Thulani Maseko, on 21 January 2023, that shook her hard. She says, she has not yet recovered from it, nor fully processed her grief.

Mary eventually joined the Lawyers for Human Rights team in 2012, and together with colleagues, decided to use their platform to wholly advance the cause of human rights. By then, however, she was already a marked attorney. At the time, she was a leading attorney in case where three Eswatini youth who were charged with terrorism for allegedly petrol bombing houses belonging to two members of parliament and a senior police officer, for which she was constantly trailed and threatened. The previous year, in 2011, she was one of the prominent figures behind the lawyers’ boycott of the country’s courts protesting the judiciary’s lack of independence.

See more HRDs of the Month

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.

Human Rights Defender of the month: Godfrey Kagaayi

Born 33 years ago, in Bukoba, northern Tanzania, Godfrey Kagaayi did not have to look elsewhere for inspiration to tackle the daunting challenge of mental health. By his own admission, the family and community in which he was raised were fertile grounds for the same.
His family had crossed the border into Uganda when he was barely 5 months, settling into present day Rakai district. But the Rakai of the 90s was a difficult place for a child to make their earliest memories: In 1990, Uganda’s first ever case of HIV/AIDs was reported in the district, setting off a decade of suffering and anguish for many of its residents. Taking advantage of the Rakai’s fishing and polygamous lifestyle, the novel virus spread like wildfire, killing people in droves and leaving untold heartache in its wake.

Human Rights Defender of the month: Hiader Abdalla Abu Gaid

Hiader Abdalla Abu Gaid is one of the lucky survivors of Sudan’s latest conflict.

He was born 36 years ago, in Almalha locality, North Darfur state, the third born in a family of 10. Then, Darfur was not the hot bed of war and conflict it has since become infamous for. Although the region, predominantly inhabited by Sudan’s black population remained segregated by the predominantly Arab government in Khartoum, its people co-existed in thriving, predominantly subsistence communities. In Almalha, people reared camels and cattle, while others tended crops. The community was also famed for its hospitality to strangers, welcoming outsiders who ended up staying, owning land, and intermarrying with their hosts.

Human Rights Defender of the month:Immaculate Nabwire and Daphne Nakabugo

In personality, Immaculate Nabwire and Daphne Nakabugo could not be more different. Where the former is loud, if free-spirited, and mischievous, the latter is quiet, reticent, and predominantly solitary. Together though, they are the quiet champions behind DefendDefenders’ digital skilling programs, equipping (women) human rights defenders with critically transformative – and sometimes, life-saving digital tools and skills.
“You’ll be surprised how many people out there, including the literate are not exposed to the idea of digital safety. And as technology gets more advanced, it is getting ever more lucrative for hackers and other malign actors, which means that the urgency of the need for digital security skills for everyone cannot be over-stated,” says Daphne.

Human Rights Defender of the month:Mary Pais Da Silva

On 17 February 2023, in Ethiopia’s rustic resort of Bishoftu, more than 5000Km from her homeland, Mary Da Silva was announced winner of the 2023 AfricanDefenders Shield Award, in the presence of hundreds of colleague human rights defenders from 36 African countries. It was a fitting validation for the Eswatini human rights lawyer, whose sense of empathy and sensitivity to injustice has been a defining hallmark of her career.
Born 45 years ago in Lubombo, eastern Eswatini, the last of 4 siblings, Mary attributes her values to her upbringing. Although she was born in Eswatini, her parents are originally from Mozambique, and only relocated to eSwatini at the start of the Mozambican civil war that lasted between 1977-1992, which ravaged families and displaced many others.

Human Rights Defender of the month: Jane Naini Meriwas

Like many African societies, The Samburu community in Northern Kenya is a gerontocracy – a very hierarchical community in which elders hold sway over almost all private and public matters. Among these predominantly pastoral nomads, very little importance is attached to the young – especially young girls, who are barely given a chance at education and often married off before their first menstrual cycle, but not before they undergo mandatory Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).
It is in this community that Jane Naini Meriwas was born 46 years ago, in Kipsing village, Oldonyiro Subcounty, Isiolo County. When she was 16, her mother passed on, and she watched with great trepidation as her father planned to marry another wife, not sure what that would mean for her or her ambitions for school. As it turned out, fate was on her side. When her father uncharacteristically asked what she thought of his plans, Jane seized the opportunity to stand up for herself and interests:

Human Rights Defender of the month: Kasale Maleton Mwaana

Kasale’s human rights activism precedes his years. The son of pastoralist parents from Ngorongoro district in northern Tanzania, he grew up seeing his parents and entire community having to defend their land and way of life against authorities who thought their lands could be put to better use. Now, at 25, Kasale is already one of the most recognizable advocates of his people’s cause, much to the ire of Tanzanian authorities.
“Our people’s struggle goes back many generations. It started with the pushing out of our forefathers from Serengeti to gazette Serengeti National Park in 1959, and then further evictions from the Ngorongoro crater to gazette the Ngorongoro conservation area in 1975. Since then, every generation has had to resist further evictions. It’s now my generation’s turn,” he says.

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