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

on behalf of the ISHR Secretariat in Bonn/Germany, I am delighted and humbled to greet all supporters of global human rights work associated with us for the German summer break. In several ways, this newsletter reflects the fruits of hard work over the past two years. As you will notice, it is more comprehensive than our previous newsletters, reflecting the increased richness and diversity of our work, as well as the closer and more cooperative global network of our sections and working groups.

In addition to a whole series of articles with news on the human rights situation in various countries around the globe (Armenia, Cameroon, Croatia, Cuba, Greece, India, Kenya, Lithuania, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Togo) as well as concrete case descriptions, this newsletter also contains reports from our own activities as ISHR Secretariat. For example, our President Prof. Thomas Schirrmacher and I recently travelled to Morocco to attend an important international conference. Our ISHR Secretariat intern Sydney Wilhelmy – to whom I would like to express our extraordinary gratitude and great respect – undertook a research trip to Greece to find out more about the current migration situation at the edges of Europe. And our first ISHR Ambassador Percy Christopher Mpindi reports on his experience with this brand-new program and the successful implementation of a self-organized and next generation focused event in Uganda. Our big thanks to him, too, for having the courage to embark on this new program and for the great standard he has set for his successors.

The challenges, but also the successes, of human rights work – this was the subject of our most recent Twitter Spaces event, a new type of communication format in social media that is now very well established and well received. Among other things, we talked about the drastic personal disadvantages and repression that numerous human rights defenders have to endure on a daily basis. The article about Jadranka Cigelj in this newsletter testifies to the indescribable dimensions this sometimes takes on. May courageous, determined people like her, who stand up for good against all odds for decades, be shining examples for all of us, who always need hope and inspiration for our human rights work.

Please stay connected with us and continue to support us.

Many thanks and warm greetings,

Matthias Boehning
Secretary General, ISHR