Egypt Country Director for the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS) Mohamed Zaree won the 2017 Martin Ennals Award, a prize which draws attention to human rights defenders who put themselves at risk to defend others’ rights. “The Award is given to Human Rights Defenders who have shown deep commitment to human rights and face great personal risk. The aim of the award is to provide protection through international recognition,” said an official Martin Ennals statement. Strongly supported by the City of Geneva, the Award is to be presented by the United Nations Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights on Tuesday at the University of Geneva. Zaree is responsible for CIHRS’s legal research, media outreach and national advocacy. CIHRS’s work was influential in the Arab world particularly Egypt, which resulted in death threats to its director. This forced the CIHRS executive director and regional staff to move abroad to continue their work. Zaree chose to stay and is now banned from travel. He is a legal scholar coordinating research to challenge laws designed to limit NGOs activities working on human rights, such as freedom of expression and assembly. The…
