#EndReprisals

[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 brave 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-descendants communities in order 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. Their situation has deteriorated since the still unfolding 2018 human rights crisis. In 2022, 90 attacks and at least 32 killings were documented in the Northern Caribbean Coast according to local rights groups. This year, on 11 March, the Wilu community was attacked by an armed group. Houses were burned and five Mayagna indigenous people were killed causing the forced displacement of the rest of the community. Anexa has spoken out against these systemic violence as she considers it amounts to genocide and crimes against humanity.

Comité de Familiares de Víctimas del Caracazo (COFAVIC), Observatorio Venezolano de Conflictividad Social (OVCS), Centro de Justicia y Paz (CEPAZ), Control Ciudadano and Espacio Público are five non-governmental organisations working for the promotion of human rights in Venezuela.

The organisations have a history of engaging with UN human rights bodies and mechanisms, a crucial effort given the multidimensional crisis that Venezuela is experiencing, with whom they have denounced abuses in the country, including with the Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela (FFM) established by the Human Rights Council in 2019. The FFM’s mandate includes the investigation of gross human rights violations in the country since 2014 and relies greatly on valuable information communicated by civil society groups such as those mentioned above.

All five NGOs have been stigmatised and discredited publicly and on social media by high-ranking State officials for their collaboration with the United Nations, including and specifically naming the directors of Control Ciudadano, Rocío San Miguel, and Espacio Público, Carlos Correa.