“I Defend Rights”, 23 Mar 2018

I Defend Rights: Shifting the Narrative about Human Rights Defenders and Civil Society Globally is a project of the Norwegian Human Rights Fund and Memria.org, in collaboration with numerous partners around the world… It is about collecting audio accounts from human rights defenders to create a global archive of recordings of their experiences working on the front lines defending the rights of others…Any defender…can participate and easily... Michel Forst, the United Nations Special Rapporteur, endorses the project…: “The “I Defend Rights” project will make audible the voices of hundreds of Human Rights Defenders from every part of the world... This project helps show how diverse and multiple the human rights community is and how courageous and valuable human rights defenders are in securing rights for all of us, sometimes at great risk. Human rights activists are not enemies of the societies they live in, they are not anti-development or threats to national security as many governments try to depict them. On the contrary, they actively contribute to peace, democracy, and sustainable development. They are agents of positive change. The project will also help us understand why we need to collectively recognize and protect them.”