On April 29, Peace Brigades International released our 19-page Annual Review outlining our collective activities in 2019.
It highlights that PBI accompanied 1,360 human rights defenders, produced 429 communications (including e-newsletters), and organized 21 advocacy tours last year.
It also significantly includes these testimonies and numerous other quotes from human rights defenders who PBI accompanies:
– “If we are alive it’s thanks to PBI, who has accompanied us for years and has been with us in our most critical moments.” – CARLOS MORALES, UVOC, Guatemala
– “In the middle of the solitude that human rights defense work can bring, turning round in a hearing and seeing the green jacket and a volunteer’s face you say to yourself, ‘ok, it’s fine, let’s keep going, I’m not alone, we’re not alone’.” – GERMAN ROMERO, DH Colombia
– “I thank PBI for accompanying me in my defense of human rights and my work in journalism. Without this accompaniment, I think my name would be on a forgotten tomb.” – DINA MEZA, Association for Democracy and Human Rights in Honduras (ASOPODEHU)
– “PBI helps us to work with greater confidence. Through the collaboration with PBI, we have seen a change in attitude in the authorities including greater openness.” – ERNESTO PALENCIA, ASMAC, Mexico
The Annual Review also notes that 465 volunteers from 28 countries accompanied the 1,360 human rights defenders we support. One of those volunteers was Javier Ignacio Hoyos from Quebec who joined the PBI-Colombia Project in February 2019.
It also highlights, “In February 2019, Obtilia Eugenio Manuel, indigenous Me’phaa defender from Guerrero, Mexico, was forcibly disappeared. Thanks to the huge national and international mobilization she was eventually found and freed.”
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