Report on Human Rights Defenders to the 44th Ordinary Session of the African Commission

END OF YEAR MESSAGE 2025

Dear Colleagues and Friends, As we close our year’s work at DefendDefenders and AfricanDefenders, it is my traditional honor to invite you to join me as we reflect on our year’s work, as valued partners in a common pursuit to ensure a safer working environment for human rights defenders (HRDs) across Africa.

Tanzania: the international community should act to prevent further violations

Following the Tanzanian authorities’ brutal response to widespread protests that

Championing Safe Digital Spaces: The Impact of Lisa Tenneh Diasay’s Work in Liberia

“Cyber security issues and incidents of digital hacking permeated the media world all around me, and I was genuinely concerned. To make matters worse, Women TV Liberia had run a story which ruffled a few feathers across the political field, resulting in our Facebook page and website being hacked. I even felt like I was being watched and followed. At one point, I went into hiding, fearing for my life.”

Human Rights Defender of the month: Hadiza Malumfashi

On the night of 14 April 2014, dozens of Boko Haram fighters stormed a girls’ school dormitory in Chibok, a small Christian enclave in northern Nigeria. 276 schoolgirls, most of them between the ages of 16 and 18, were forced at gunpoint into the forest after militants set the school ablaze. As the world woke up to the horror of the Chibok abductions, a ten-year-old Hadiza Malumfashi sat in front of the news, devastated and full of questions.

Reflections on the 85th Ordinary Session of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR85)

Our 14-member delegation’s engagement at the session and in the preceding NGO Forum under the African Union’s 2025 theme, “Justice for Africans and People of African Descent through Reparations,” was guided by a commitment to amplify the voices of HRDs across Africa.