Dear friends, partners and supporters of the International Society for Human Rights,

with this newsletter you once again receive news and background information on the human rights situation in numerous countries around the world. From reflections on the situation of elderly slum dwellers in the Korogocho slum in Nairobi, to the low rate of return migration among young emigrated Albanians or the suppression of lyrical literature by Uyghurs in China, as well as many other insights into a wide variety of countries and contexts – the collection of articles once again demonstrates the urgent need for and wide range of human rights engagement around the globe.

While most of the reports are depressing testimonies to serious human rights violations and offer little reason to rejoice, we are pleased to report some positive news in this newsletter: A whole slew of new young people are joining the work of the International Society for Human Rights! This week, our new intern in the International Secretariat, Yan Genot-Adleff, started his work and the next round of our Ambassador Program with eight motivated and extremely talented young people will start at the beginning of May. We are delighted about the expansion of our capacities as well as the talents and personalities who will broaden and deepen our work.

As a human rights organization that can already look back on fifty years of activity, we are active in almost all traditional human rights issues and fields of action. From time to time, however, we should also take a look at new, perhaps unfamiliar, thematic areas and their human rights implications. This is important in order to recognize relevant trends at an early stage and hopefully be able to work on them with equally high-quality know-how and expertise in the future. Admittedly, this can also be challenging at times, as such outlooks always have to do with forecasts and assumptions about an uncertain future. Nevertheless, we are happy to take you on an intellectual journey into the world of transhumanism and its human rights implications in this issue of the ISHR newsletter.

As always, I wish you a stimulating read and, as always, I hope that you will stay in touch with us,

Matthias Boehning
Secretary General, ISHR