Mohamed El-Baqer is a human rights lawyer from Egypt. He is the director of the Adalah Center for Rights and Freedoms, founded in 2014. It is a non-governmental, independent legal and human rights organisation with a focus on four Programmes: 1) Criminal Justice 2) Student Rights and Academic Freedoms; 3) Refugees; 4) and Minorities. All these Programmes are implemented through legal support and strategic litigation, research, monitoring and documentation, advocacy activities and capacity-building.

Mohamed is known for his relentless advocacy to protect and empower rights, freedom and justice for all and has received several prestigious awards, recognising his work as a human rights lawyer and commitment to the rule of law.

For the Universal Periodic Review of Egypt in 2019, Mohamed’s organisation submitted several joint reports highlighting the human rights situation in the country.

[This case has not been included in any Secretary-General reports. ISHR has been campaigning for it to be recognised as a case of reprisals].

Anexa Alfred Cunningham is a Miskitu Indigenous leader, woman human rights defender, lawyer and expert on Indigenous Peoples’ rights from Nicaragua. She defends the ancestral land and natural resources of Indigenous and Afro-descendant Peoples of the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua. She has also worked with Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities to investigate the many abuses they suffer and denounce them to the United Nations. These Peoples face attacks by armed groups who seek to take away their ancestral territory with the State’s approval.

Kadar Abdi Ibrahim is a human rights defender and journalist from Djibouti. He has drawn inspiration from historic figures in the human rights movement in the hopes of building a solid and lasting democracy in his country.

From 2015, Kadar was the co-director and chief editor of L’Aurore, Djibouti’s only privately-owned media outlet. In 2016, the newspaper was banned following the publication of a story on one of the victims of the Buldhuqo massacre, crackdown by Djibouti security forces on a religious celebration and a meeting of the opposition on 21 December 2015 that left at least 27 people dead. Kadar is also the president of the political party Movement for Democracy and Freedom (MoDEL) since December 2021. Over the years, Kadar has been arrested several times by the police in an attempt to silence him.

Loujain is an iconic figure in Saudi Arabia’s women’s rights movement. She has actively campaigned for women’s rights in the country and against the driving ban imposed on women. She has also publicly and consistently called for the dismantlement of the male guardianship system.

Loujain was listed in the Times 100 most influential women of 2019, which described her “fearless, longtime efforts” as the foundation for change in legislation allowing women to drive.