Ibrahim Metwally Hegazy is a human rights defender and lawyer working on the issue of enforced disappearances. He is a co-founder and the coordinator of the Association of the Families of the Disappeared in Egypt.

The network focuses on assisting families in locating and investigating the fate of forcibly or involuntarily disappeared loved ones. Metwally Hegazy founded the organisaton following the disappearance of his own son in July 2013, whose whereabouts remain unknown.

In September 2017, while on his way to Geneva at the invitation of the United Nations Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances, he was disappeared for two days, and was subsequently arbitrarily detained. Five years later, he is still in detention.

Armel Niyongere, Dieudonné Bashirahishize, Vital Nshimirimana and Lambert Nigarura are four lawyers, human rights defenders and activists from Burundi. They are prominent and well-respected figures within Burundian civil society and their local communities.

They publicly denounced and condemned the use of violence by the Government of Burundi, including following citizens’ protests in 2015, when the former Burundian President, Pierre Nkurunziza, sought a third term in violation of the country’s Constitution.

Fearing for their safety given the violent targeting of protestors by the Government, the lawyers fled Burundi in May and June 2015. To date, they have not been able to return to Burundi out of fear of suffering additional retaliatory actions.

The Human Right Center ‘Viasna’ is a non-governmental organisation actively working for the development of civil society and the promotion of human rights in Belarus, also providing legal aid to people in defending their rights and public interests.

Viasna has a long-standing history of cooperation with the United Nations human rights bodies and mechanisms, which has increased amid the ongoing crackdown on human rights defenders and organisations in Belarus.

Due to its engagement with the UN, Viasna has been subjected to continuous acts of harassment and intimidation at the hands of the government, including the raiding of their offices and the arbitrary detention of its members.

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.

Jiang Tianyong is a prominent human rights lawyer and legal rights activist from China. He has been working at the grassroots level to defend land and housing rights, promote the rights of vulnerable social groups and expose the root causes of systemic rights abuses.

He defended high-profile cases in China, including clients with HIV, Falun Gong practitioners, Tibetan protesters and victims of the 2008 milk scandal.

Despite being arbitrarily disbarred by the government in 2009, Jiang has tirelessly continued his valuable human rights work to improve the situation in China. He has persisted in denouncing human rights violations in his country and supported numerous well-known human rights defenders unlawfully detained.

A trade unionist, human rights defender, opposition activist and environmental activist, Ahmed Amasha is the co-founder of the League for Families of the Disappeared. The League provides legal support for families of victims of enforced disappearance.

In Egypt, the work of NGOs and human rights defenders is tightly restricted by a law passed in 2019, which comes as a continuation of an already widely criticised law passed in 2017.

Though the 2019 law has swapped planned prison sentences for breaches with hefty fines, it maintains draconian restrictions on NGOs. This law requires that organisations abide by vaguely worded and sweeping concerns of "national security" and "public morality" in order to gain legal recognition in a state registry.

It also limits the activities of registered organisations to serving what authorities call "the State's development plans and the needs of the society", requiring all registered entities to seek yearly approval for their work and strictly limiting their access to foreign funding.

Both iterations of the law on NGOs have severely curtailed the ability of Egyptian NGOs to engage with the UN, which is considered a reprisal for some organisations' previous engagement in the country's Universal Public Review in 2014.

Several human rights defenders are understood to have been targeted by authorities in reprisal for their engagement with UN bodies.

Ramy Kamel Saied Salib is a member of Egypt's Coptic religious minority, and one of the founders and a prominent member of the Maspero Youth Union, a non-governmental organisation that advocates for the rights of Egypt's Copts and documents abuses against them.

In Egypt, the work of NGOs and human rights defenders is tightly restricted by a law passed in 2019, which comes as a continuation of an already widely criticised law passed in 2017.

Though the 2019 law has swapped planned prison sentences for breaches with hefty fines, it maintains draconian restrictions on NGOs. This law requires that organisations abide by vaguely worded and sweeping concerns of "national security" and "public morality" in order to gain legal recognition in a state registry.

It also limits the activities of registered organisations to serving what authorities call "the State’s development plans and the needs of the society", requiring all registered entities to seek yearly approval for their work and strictly limiting their access to foreign funding.

Both iterations of the law on NGOs have severely curtailed the ability of Egyptian NGOs to engage with the UN, which is considered a reprisal for some organisations’ previous engagement in the country’s Universal Public Review in 2014.

Nfor Hanson Nchanji is an award-winning Human Rights Journalist from Cameroon. He has worked for Douala-based Equinoxe Television and is the founder of the online news outlet Cameroon News Agency.

He has reported on the tensions in Cameroon's English-speaking regions, becoming a staunch advocate for the rights of the country's English-speaking communities since the outset of the Anglophone crisis, in 2016, during which he documented and denounced abuses committed both by government and separatists forces.

As a result of his reporting and activism, Hanson Nchanji has faced threats and harassment campaigns seemingly orchestrated by supporters of the Francophone government. He is currently in exile.

In Egypt, the work of NGOs and human rights defenders is tightly restricted by a law passed in 2019, which comes as a continuation of an already widely criticised law passed in 2017.

Though the 2019 law has swapped planned prison sentences for breaches with hefty fines, it maintains draconian restrictions on NGOs. This law requires that organisations abide by vaguely worded and sweeping concerns of "national security" and "public morality" in order to gain legal recognition in a state registry.

It also limits the activities of registered organisations to serving what authorities call "the State’s development plans and the needs of the society", requiring all registered entities to seek yearly approval for their work and strictly limiting their access to foreign funding.

Both iterations of the law on NGOs have severely curtailed the ability of Egyptian NGOs to engage with the UN, which is considered a reprisal for some organisations’ previous engagement in the country’s Universal Public Review in 2014.

Several members of the Egyptian Coordination for Rights and Freedoms (ECRF) were arrested in 2018 under charges including ‘providing international entities with false news’. The ECRF is a Cairo-based organisation that provides legal advice to families of victims of enforced disappearance and documents human rights violations. It has engaged with UN mechanisms.

Organic Farming for Gorillas (OFFGO), is an organisation founded in September 2015 that aims to support the practices and rights of traditional farming and nomadic livestock communities in the North West Region of Cameroon.

In May 2019, Special Procedures mandate holders expressed concern about a defamation campaign and acts of reprisals against OFFGO, who had published information about abuses and disputes linked to land and business operations in Cameroon.

The defamation campaign began in 2015, following OFFGO's publication of a report describing how communities were facing 'systematic intimidation and harassment by local administrative and judicial authorities' and denouncing a 'serious case of alleged land grabbing by a tea and cattle corporation.'

Naâma Asfari is a Sahrawi human rights defender who has campaigned for the self-determination of Western Sahara. The territory is a former Spanish colony that remains under Moroccan occupation despite a 1992 UN ruling for a referendum on independence, which has yet to be complied with.

In a heavily criticised trial held in 2013, Asfari was sentenced to 30 years in prison for his alleged involvement in the murder of 11 Moroccan soldiers during a 2010 operation that saw the brutal dismantling of a large camp set up in Gdim Izik by Sahrawi civil society organisations to protest against Morocco's occupation of the region.

Mohamed El-Baqer is director of the Adalah Center for Rights and Freedoms. The Adalah Center for Rights and Freedoms is a non-governmental organisation established in 2014 to uphold and promote the rights of students, refugees, and migrants.

In Egypt, the work of NGOs and human rights defenders is tightly restricted by a law passed in 2019, which comes as a continuation of an already widely criticised law passed in 2017.

Though the 2019 law has swapped planned prison sentences for breaches with hefty fines, it maintains draconian restrictions on NGOs. This law requires that organisations abide by vaguely worded and sweeping concerns of "national security" and "public morality" in order to gain legal recognition in a state registry.

It also limits the activities of registered organisations to serving what authorities call "the State’s development plans and the needs of the society", requiring all registered entities to seek yearly approval for their work and strictly limiting their access to foreign funding.

Both iterations of the law on NGOs have severely curtailed the ability of Egyptian NGOs to engage with the UN, which is considered a reprisal for some organisations’ previous engagement in the country’s Universal Public Review in 2014.

A former mathematics and physics professor, Alfredo Okenve is a human rights defender and anti-corruption activist from Equatorial Guinea. He is the president of the NGO Centro de Estudios e Iniciativas para el Desarrollo de Guinea Ecuatorial (CEIDGE).

His advocacy and activism, including his engagement with UN bodies, and in particular his efforts to highlight issues of transparency related to the work of extractive industry actors present in the country, have been met with stark responses from Equatoguinean authorities. The latter have engaged in repeated acts of reprisals against him in recent years.