Article 19 is a British international human rights organisation that works to defend and promote freedom of expression and freedom of information worldwide. It was founded in 1987. The organisation takes its name from Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states:
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; the right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers.
Abdolfattah Soltani is an Iranian human rights lawyer and spokesman for the Defenders of Human Rights Center. He co-founded the group with Mohammad Seifzadeh and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Shirin Ebadi. Along with Ebadi, Soltani served as a lawyer for the family of slain Iranian-Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi, who was allegedly tortured and murdered in Evin Prison in July 2003. Ebadi and Soltani, along with others, also represented jailed journalist Akbar Ganji during his imprisonment and long hunger strike. Soltani, who won the Nuremberg International Human Rights Award, in 2009, served time in prison in 2005 and 2009, and was sentenced to 18-year prison sentence in 2012.
International organizations have frequently alleged that Azerbaijan has violated human rights standards established in international law.
Human rights in Egypt are guaranteed by the Constitution of the Arab Republic of Egypt under the various articles of Chapter 3. The country is also a party to numerous international human rights treaties, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. However, the state of human rights in the country has been criticized both in the past and the present, especially by foreign human rights organisations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. As of 2022, Human Rights Watch has declared that Egypt's human rights crises under the government of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, is "one of its worst ... in many decades", and that "tens of thousands of government critics, including journalists, peaceful activists, and human rights defenders, remain imprisoned on abusive 'terrorism' charges, many in lengthy pretrial detention." International human rights organizations, such as the aforementioned HRW and Amnesty International, have alleged that as of January 2020, there are some 60,000 political prisoners in Egypt. Other complaints made are of authorities harassing and detaining "relatives of dissidents abroad" and use of "vague 'morality' charges to prosecute LGBT people, female social media influencers, and survivors of sexual violence". The Egyptian government has frequently rejected such criticism, denying that any of the prisoners it holds are political prisoners.
The Weiquan movement is a non-centralized group of lawyers, legal experts, and intellectuals in China who seek to protect and defend the civil rights of the citizenry through litigation and legal activism. The movement, which began in the early 2000s, has organized demonstrations, sought reform via the legal system and media, defended victims of human rights abuses, and written appeal letters, despite opposition from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Among the issues adopted by Weiquan lawyers are property and housing rights, protection for AIDS victims, environmental damage, religious freedom, freedom of speech and the press, and defending the rights of other lawyers facing disbarment or imprisonment.
Azimzhan Askarov was a Kyrgyzstani political activist who founded the group Vozduh in 2002 to investigate police brutality. Of ethnic Uzbek descent, during the 2010 South Kyrgyzstan ethnic clashes, which primarily targeted people of the Uzbek nationality, Askarov worked to document the violence.
Bakhtiyar Ilyas oglu Hajiyev is an Azerbaijani activist and blogger who served a prison sentence from 2011 to 2012 on charges of evading military service. His imprisonment was protested by numerous human rights organizations.
Kouhyar Goudarzi is an Iranian human rights activist, journalist and blogger who was imprisoned several times by the government of Iran. He previously served as an editor of Radio Zamane. He is a member of Committee of Human Rights Reporters (CHRR), serving as the head from 2005-2009.
Narges Mohammadi is an Iranian human rights activist and Nobel laureate. She is the vice president of the Defenders of Human Rights Center (DHRC), headed by her fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Shirin Ebadi. Mohammadi has been a vocal proponent of mass feminist civil disobedience against the hijab in Iran and a vocal critic of the hijab and chastity program of 2023. In May 2016, she was sentenced in Tehran to 16 years' imprisonment for establishing and running "a human rights movement that campaigns for the abolition of the death penalty." She was released in 2020 but sent back to prison in 2021, where she has since given reports of the abuse and solitary confinement of detained women.
Khadija Rovshan qizi Ismayilova, alternatively spelled Ismailova, is an Azerbaijani investigative journalist and radio host who is currently working for the Azerbaijani service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, until recently as the host of the daily debate show İşdən Sonra. She is a member of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.
Most Azerbaijanis receive their information from mainstream television, which is unswervingly pro-government and under strict government control. According to a 2012 report of the NGO "Institute for Reporters' Freedom and Safety (IRFS)" Azerbaijani citizens are unable to access objective and reliable news on human rights issues relevant to Azerbaijan and the population is under-informed about matters of public interest.
Rasul Jafarov is a lawyer and prominent human rights defender in Azerbaijan.
Intiqam Kamil oglu Aliyev is an Azerbaijani lawyer and human rights activist.
Arif Seyfulla oghlu Yunusov, also known as Arif Yunus, is an Azerbaijani author, historian, and human rights activist. He is the head of the Department of Conflict and Migration of the Institute of Peace and Democracy. Arif Yunusov along with his wife Leyla are supporters of a peaceful resolution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. On 28 April 2014, Arif Yunusov and his wife Leyla were jailed on charges of extortion and treason for allegedly spying for Armenia. After being detained, Arif Yunusov was sentenced to 7 years in jail; his wife, Leyla Yunus, was sentenced to 8.5 years in jail. Their sentences were suspended 15 months later and the couple was allowed to leave for the Netherlands.
Emin Rafiq oglu Huseynov is an Azerbaijani journalist and human rights activist. He was the chairman of the Institute for Reporters' Freedom and Safety. After he was forced into hiding to avoid arrest in Azerbaijan, Huseynov fled Azerbaijan and is in the process of attaining political asylum status in Switzerland.
Rauf Habibulla oghlu Mirgadirov is an Azerbaijani columnist and journalist. He has worked for the Baku based Russian-language newspaper Zerkalo. A believer in "citizen diplomacy" between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Mirgadirov was arrested for allegedly spying for Armenia and has been detained since April 2014. In December 2015, he was found guilty and sentenced to six years of prison. Following an appeal of his case, the ruling was upheld in March 2016, but Mirgadirov was released on suspended sentence.
Shahla Humbatova has been an Azerbaijani human rights lawyer since 2013. After speaking out about prison conditions she found herself disbarred from being a lawyer. There were international protests and in 2020 she was recognised as an International Woman of Courage by the US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo.
Yu Wensheng is a Chinese human rights lawyer based in Beijing. He is known for criticizing the Chinese Communist Party and taking up politically sensitive cases against the government.
Free Media Awards is the press prizes awarded by the two foundations The Fritt Ord Foundation and the ZEIT-Stiftung.
Said Matinpour is an Iranian national cultural activist, journalist and former political prisoner.
Azerbaijani