العربي الديمقراطي The Latest From The Arab World
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By Sherehan Osman
This year the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced the candidate for the Human Rights Tulip annual award which courageous human rights defenders who promote and support human rights in the world.
This award established 6 years ago, and has been awarded to individuals and organizations from different destinations. Its aims to gives human rights defenders a chance to learn from each other. And the prize money which is worth €100,000 will give the winner the opportunity to expand the scale of his work in human rights.
The last year’s winner was a Pakistani organization called “Aahung” works in promoting sexual and reproductive health and rights among young people and adults in Pakistan. Aahung used the prize money to produce a three-part TV drama, radio shows, and a campaign of text messages about the rights of women and girls.
This year there are seven human rights Arab figures among the candidates. Some of them are NGOs and others individuals. These candidates are from Egypt , Syria , Lebanon , and Morocco . The most prominent of these candidates are Cairo institute for human rights and the Syrian activist Mazen Darwish. And here are the seven candidates in brief as mentioned in the award website:
- Cairo Institute for human rights studies (CIHRS): a regional NGO located in Egypt aims to
strengthen the human rights movement within the Middle East and North Africa. CIHRS’s advocacy focuses on the protection of rights and freedoms in the public sphere, and the expansion of democratic space. Its four programs have played a major role in CIHRS’s successful advocacy against repressive draft legislations that have aimed to stifle the work of civil society in Egypt and in human rights education in the region . - Mazen Darwish: a Syrian human rights defender and journalist, who established the Syrian Center for
Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM) in 2004. He has been detained since February 2012 and was tortured and almost killed. Mazen worked on educating the prisoners around him, holding reading and writing courses, two workshops about “civil society in Syria,” and the second on “the future of Syria.” Mazen Darwish was transferred to Damascus Center prison on November 31, 2012 where he remains to this day.
- Abounaddara: is a collective of Syrian short documentary film makers that want to show the world a different story about the Syrian people. Since April 2011, the collective has produced a short film every week.
- Mideast Youth: it created and online platforms for under-reported and censored voices advocating change throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Its platforms are designed to be tools in the hands of those seeking social change, where they serve as a conduit between their voices and the world’s attention.
- SHEILD: an NGO tackles human rights issues in south Lebanon from an economic perspective. It uses economic empowerment and income generating activities as the main door in accessing communities and contacting authorities and local stakeholders to talk about and discuss human rights.
The Centre for Civil Society and Democracy in Syria (CCSDS): an NGO that has a network of almost 3,000 human rights defenders that tries to bring communities together in support of human rights in an incredibly dangerous environment. Its approach is to identify the local leaders in Syria who are promoting human rights, build their capacity through training and mentoring, support them to do important projects in their communities and then link them to each other and to national and international decision-makers.
- Droit et Justice: an NGO aims to promoting civil liberties, human rights and democracy and the reform of criminal justice in Morocco. It also provides legal aid to the poor.
On December 9th, the ministry will award the winner the bronze Human Rights Tulip statue and the financial prize .The nomination round yielded almost 160 nominees from more than 50 countries. Only 30 candidates (including the 7 Arab names) went through to the online voting round.
Public voting opened (Monday, September 29th) and will close on Friday, October 10th) and people can vote through this link :