East and Horn of Africa Human Rights Defenders Project/Network

The East and Horn of Africa Human Rights Defenders Project (EHAHRDP) seeks to strengthen the work of human rights defenders (HRDs) throughout the region by reducing their vulnerability to the risk of persecution and by enhancing their capacity to effectively defend human rights.

EHAHRDP focuses its work on Burundi, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia (together with Somaliland), Sudan (together with South Sudan), Tanzania and Uganda. As of 2008 it also includes Rwanda and Burundi into its scope given their recent adhesion to the East African Community.

Many countries in this sub-region have experienced massive human rights abuses, long-term and large-scale impunity, single-party and military dictatorships, civil wars, and in the case of Somalia, a collapsed state; such situations and contexts render both the work and lives of human rights defenders particularly challenging.

This project was established following extensive field research in the region, which identified the most pressing and unmet needs of human rights defenders in order to seek to overcome some of the resulting challenges. . 
The key areas identified as needing to be addressed were:

• Insufficient collaboration amongst human-rights organizations, especially among neighboring countries;  
• Resource constraints (notably material) which greatly undermine the effectiveness of the work carried out by human rights defenders;  
• Knowledge gaps, in particular regarding international human rights instruments and mechanisms as well as crisis management.

The East and Horn of Africa Human Rights Defenders Network was established in 2005 and currently brings together more than 65 non-governmental organizations active in the protection of human rights throughout the region. Its objectives evolve from its vision of a region in which the human rights of every citizen as stipulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) are respected and upheld, and is further emphasized in its mission to maximize the protection of Human Rights Defenders working in the region and to enhance the awareness of human rights work through linkages with national, regional and international like-minded entities.
Its declared objectives are:

• To protect and defend HRDs in the region
• To build the capacity of HRDs in the region, and
• To advocate and raise public awareness and profiles of HRDs in the region

To reach these objectives, the activities of the Network will focus on a threefold strategy along the following lines:

• Protection
• Capacity building
• Advocacy