Our Advocates

Tamar is a co-founder and the chairperson of Initiative for Social Changes (ISC). ISC encourages the realization of social rights by advocating for better social services and policies for children, youth, and women. Recent projects have included raising awareness about violence against children, school-related gender-based violence, gender equality in schools, and the sexual and reproductive health and rights of girls and young women. She is also actively involved in providing training and professional development activities for practitioners from the field of child protection and gender equality in Georgia.

I have not once asked myself why I am interested in human rights. At the beginning of my experience, I was an activist with a human rights organization in my country. Today, I am journalist. While it may seem that I am no longer involved with human rights, the media in my country does not have freedom of speech—this is a human rights violation. In Belarus, there are a number of human rights violations.

Upon reflection, I can say that my belief in religion has led me to human rights. It is not possible to remain on the sidelines when the world has injustice, inequality, humiliation, violence and the death penalty. I hold a deep conviction that the protection of human rights is a collective task. Respect for human rights is an indicator of the maturity of the state. We must search for mutual understanding and put the needs of others above our own.

Colins Imoh has worked in various youth based organizations and was involved in the setting up of the Africa Network of Young Peace Builders (ANYP). He was the Africa Desk Coordinator working at the International Secretariat of the UNOY in the Netherlands. The ANYP is a continental initiative that joins the efforts of young people in over 40 African countries for the purposes of building peace and actively collaborating in the search for the non-violent resolution of conflicts.

Imoh was awarded the prestigious Winston Fellowship in 2003 to attend the Summer Peace Building Institute of the Eastern Mennonite University (EMU) in the USA. Professionally, he holds an MA in Conflict Transformation from EMU, Virginia, USA and an MPhil from the University of Cape Town in Environmental Management.

He was the pioneer Partners for Peace Project Manager, a network whose mission is to build social capital around peacebuilding through amplifying the voices of positive actors, building a network of self-identified agents of peace, and leveraging that network through facilitation, small grants, and capacity building. This network includes stakeholders from civil society, community-based, organizations, nongovernmental organizations, private companies, donor organizations, and the general public committed to promoting peaceable livelihoods in the Niger Delta.

Earlier in his career, Imoh was the Project Director of Centre for Human Development Social Transformation in Port Harcourt. He was responsible for planning and coordination of the Protect our Future Peace & Civic Education Project. Organizing training of stakeholders on social transformation as well as the host of a weekly Vision Nigeria Radio Programme on Democracy, Good Governance, Peace & Development. He was a member of the 2011 HRAP advocates at the Institute for the Study of Human Rights in Columbia University, New York, USA.

Imoh is currently pursuing a doctorate in peace education with a minor in research and measurement. His long-term goal is to establish a center in the Niger Delta, which will be involved in training, research and advocacy in the areas of environmental and conflict management.

“To ask me why I am doing human rights,” Abu Tunde Irunukhar says, “is to ask me why I am being human. Human rights is about being human.” Tunde came to understand human rights while working with the HIV/AIDS community in Nigeria, where persons living with HIV/AIDS are not only stigmatized and rejected from society, but are seen as less than human on account of their HIV status. He began challenging this view by mobilizing communities and raising awareness about HIV and by strengthening the capacity of persons living with and affected by HIV/AIDS to obtain their rights. “When you provide rights,” he explains, “you make people live life to the fullest.”

For Tunde, human rights advocacy started during a year of service during which he provided basic items to orphaned babies and prison inmates. He recalls, “Through reaching out to these communities, I was reaching out to humanity and bringing excitement and joy from just basic items.” Tunde involved himself in advocacy by joining AIDS Alliance in Nigeria in 2003. When some of the people he worked with died during treatment for the disease, the importance of human rights became even clearer for him. “Only people with an awareness of rights can assert themselves to procure treatments and come back to life in the community,” he says. Tunde has since used human rights to demand services and care and push for access to a comprehensive continuum of care, accountability and transparency in the utilization of HIV/AIDS funds; greater involvement of people living with HIV; and workplace policies for those infected by HIV/AIDS.

In his own life, meanwhile, human rights has offered him a whole new outlook to living. “I think holistically,” he says. “because human rights come in bunches—you can’t talk about one right without other rights.”

2006 Advocate Chukwumuanya Igboekwu currently works as Executive Director and Health Program Associate of Physicians for Social Justice (PSJ) which he co-founded in 2004. PSJ is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting community health, human rights and broader social justice for marginalized rural communities in northern Nigeria. He coordinates PSJ’s advocacy efforts and also manages PSJ’s service delivery programs that provide access to basic social services including health, education and community development.

He reflects that his participation in HRAP provided a “unique networking opportunity of a lifetime”. When he participated in 2006 as Health Program Associate of PSJ, he wrote two articles: ‘Why Pharmaceutical Companies Must Not Deny People with HIV/AIDS Access to Life-Saving Antiretroviral Medicines Using the Excuse of Patent Protection’ and ‘The World Trade Organization’s Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement’. These articles were published by the Business and Human Rights Resource Center. He states, “The Washington D.C. networking trip afforded me the opportunity to speak with State Department officers to support the importance of continuous funding to the Global AIDS program through the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).”

Igboekwu says that his participation in HRAP led to funding from American Jewish World Service and the Global Fund for Children for approximately $ 180,000 dollars in total to date. He highlights, “PSJ has grown from a small community-based organization into a national level NGO that plays active role in shaping HIV/AIDS policy in Nigeria.” As a result of his dedication in collaborating with other stakeholders for the protection of people living with HIV/AIDS, thousands of people with HIV/AIDS from rural areas in Nigeria have more access to life saving antiretroviral drugs and live in integration within their communities. Also, he and his staff at PSJ developed a project, supported by the Centre for Development and Population Activities (CEDPA) and United States Agency for International Development (USAID), called “Community AIDS Program”. PSJ’s Community AIDS Program was a winner of the 2010 joint UNAIDS/UNDP Red Ribbon Awards in Vienna, Austria.

Igboekwu enthusiastically expresses his strong gratitude toward the staff of the Institute (then Center) for the Study of Human Rights, “They inspired me and gave me all the exposure that helped shape my understanding of human rights and the global economy. They were every ready to assist me make that connection with potential partners or resources that I need for my work. Even when I returned to Nigeria, they continued supporting me and PSJ.” After the program, he received his master’s degree in Public Health from University of Lagos, Nigeria, in 2008.

He concludes, “HRAP was an extraordinary program that gave me insight with the intersection between health and human rights. The program was very intensive and exciting by providing opportunities to explore new partners, academic topics in the field of human rights and engagement with U.S. policy makers along with CEOs of big US pharmaceutical companies whose business have a strong impact on poop people’s access to medicines in developing countries.”

—Article composed by Junghwa Lee, Program Coordinator, August 2011