The Swiss section of the ISHR held its annual meeting in Biel on Saturday, April 5, 2025. We were honored to welcome Matthias Boehning, Secretary General of the ISHR. The ISHR Switzerland would like to intensify its cooperation with the ISHR. In addition, a fresh wind is blowing in the ISHR Switzerland anyway. With the couple René and Dorothe Touh, two new board members have just been elected. We are excited to see what new projects we will be able to realize together with the new board members.

At the annual meeting, the eagerly awaited question of who will receive the Swiss Human Rights Prize in 2025 was also answered. Ms. Churla Flores, a Bolivian living in Geneva, will be honored with the prize. She runs a school in the La Paz region of Bolivia with over 2000 children and is a strong advocate for human rights in Bolivian politics. We will introduce Churla in more detail in a newsletter at a later point in time.

The honorary president and winner of the Swiss Human Rights Award 2024, Monique Schlegel, also attended the annual meeting. We promised her that we would update and reissue the brochure on children's rights that she published in the 1990s together with the ISHR Germany and the ISHR Austria. It has long been Monique's dream that this brochure be reissued. We now want to fulfill this dream for her. 

Hanspeter Hartmann
Executive Director of ISHR Switzerland