Human Rights Tulip 2024: Five nominees
Weblogs
Five candidates have been nominated for the Human Rights Tulip 2024. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs annually awards this prize annually to human rights defenders to support them in their work. This year, Minister Veldkamp will announce the winner on December 12.
Wilker Dias
Wilker Dias is a dedicated social and political human rights defender whose innovative work has significantly enhanced electoral integrity in Mozambique. As the founder of the Democratic Monitoring Platform (DECIDE) in Beira, he championed transparency during the 2023 local elections. DECIDE not only exposed electoral misconduct but also highlighted urgent human rights violations, ensured timely reporting, and boosted a youth-led movement on political participation in Mozambique.
Stella Maris Martínez
For more than 18 years, under various governments, Stella Maris Martínez has held the position of Public Defender of Argentina. She is renowned for her commitment to access to justice and the defense of human rights, particularly aimed at historically disadvantaged groups. Under her leadership, significant achievements have been made in integrating standards regarding gender and women’s rights within the Argentinian Public Ministry of Defense and the Argentinian justice system in general.
Vasile Micleusanu
Vasile Micleusanu is a LGBTIQ+ human rights defender of Roma ethnicity, who launched the first media platform for the LGBTIQ+ community in Moldova. His work has been dedicated to countering disinformation, fighting discrimination, and promoting new narratives from a LGBTIQ+ perspective. In less than two years, his platform bangbang.md has gathered about 80,000 unique users and has become an active voice of and for the community in Moldova and Romania.
Community Peacemaker Teams
Community Peacemaker Teams (CPT) is a human rights organisation dedicated to freedom of expression, peacebuilding, and non-violent methods of conflict resolution in the Kurdistan Region in Iraq. The foundation for CPT’s work is reliable data, which they see as the basis for honest dialogue on sensitive themes. Topics CPT has been vocal on include the protection of journalists, publication of data on military casualties, and accountability for human rights abuses.
Blert Morina
Blert Morina is the Executive Director of the Center for Equality and Liberty for LGBTIQ+ people in Kosovo, and a dedicated trans activist with over a decade of experience in defending human rights and advocating for the well-being of LGBTIQ+ communities in Kosovo. Blert was the first transgender person in Kosovo to openly change his name and gender designation. For this, he waged a long legal battle against the Republic of Kosovo.