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The prize will be delivered to the Laureate selected by the Rafto Prize Committee and announced on 23 September 2010 in Bergen. A recipient should be an active participant in the struggle for the ideals and principles underlying the Human Rights Charter, or be an embodying symbol of these. A recipient may be a person or an organisation, and two or more recipients may share the prize.

Recipients are to be selected by the Rafto Prize Committee. The 2010 Rafto Prize Committee is chaired by Siri Gloppen, Professor at the University of Bergen, Institute of Comparative Politics and Christian Michelsen Research Institute (CMI).

Voluntary organisations, institutions and individuals worldwide are welcome to nominate candidates for the 2010 Rafto Prize for Human Rights. The Rafto Prize, awarded in memory of Norwegian professor Thorolf Rafto, is awarded to an individual or organisation that embodies and upholds the principles of the Human Rights Charter through activism or engagement.

The European Court of Human Rights has ordered Republic of Turkey to pay a total of over 40,000 Euros to 20 Turkish journalists as compensation for having violated their rights. Welcoming the judgment, IPI Board Member Ferai Tinc, Chairperson of the IPI Turkish National Committee, said they would like the canceling of prison sentences in cases concerning the media.

This week the Norwegian Helsinki Committee presents its report on Nakchivan at the winter session of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE). NHC’s Berit Lindeman and Vugar Gojaev accompanies the 2009 Rafto award winner Malahat Nasibova from Nakhchivan and her husband. Ane Bonde of the Human Rights House Foundation is also part of the delegation.

The Uyghur American Association (UAA) fears that the near doubling of the security budget for East Turkestan will broaden the scope of the ongoing official repression of Uyghurs and exacerbate ethnic tensions in the region, UAA claims Beijing fails to acknowledge the deep social and developmental inequalities that contributed to the unrest in the regional capital of East Turkestan in July 2009.

New Amnesty’s campaign to be presented: since 11 September 2001, torture and detention without charge or trial has been adopted by countries like the United States, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka as anti-terrorist measures. There are victims of this practice and their dependents, whom we are going to support during our spring’2010 campaign.

On 21st January 2009, US President Obama signed executive orders directing the Central Intelligence Agency to shut what remains of its network of secret prisons and ordering the closing of the Guantánamo detention camp within a year, Amnesty International reminds.

The Western Sahara peace activist Aminatu Haidar, right, switched within hours from being on the verge of death from an enforced hunger strike in Spain to being held under house arrest at her home in El Aaiun. When you are fighting for civil rights for your country, your life is constantly at risk.