Delegates from throughout the Human Rights House Network (HRH N) will gather this weekend in Nairobi for the Network’s annual meeting, immediately followed by a regional and international conference, addressing the security and working conditions for human rights defenders in the East and Horn of Africa, and aspects of the sustainability of their organisations. (07-NOV-07)

Written by HRH F / Niels Jacob Harbitz.

Delegates from more than ten different countries fly into Nairobi on Friday for meetings and discussions on Saturday and Sunday, most importantly on the Human Rights House Network’s plan of action for 2008 and 2009. On Monday, the HRH N delegates will be joined by approximately 50 Kenyan human rights defenders, and also representatives of the independent human rights movements in the neighbouring countries Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia and Uganda who will all attend and contribute to the conference ‘Civil Societies at a Crossroads: Sustaining human rights organisations in the East and Horn of Africa’. The conference will open with the launch of a report jointly resarched and written by the seven human rights organisations involved in the HRH project in Nairobi. The report critically examines the human rights situation in Kenya and the record in this area of the current regime, which is up for general elections later this year. This year’s HRH Network meeting and annual human rights defenders conference is held in Nairobi in moral and political support of the local human rights movement and the expected challenges it will face before and after the forthcoming elections. 

The conference has been kindly supported by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Freedom of Expression Foundation and the Ford Foundation.

More news and background information on the network meeting and conference will follow.