The conviction that human rights are essential to the achievement of universal standards of human dignity and social justice is what drives us. It is also what has brought us together, a group of people of different nationalities, to form Human Rights Everywhere (HREV) and to work for human rights wherever we are and wherever we may have an impact.
The main activities of HREV are as follows:
- We support initiatives to promote and defend human rights in places where they are violated.
- We produce and publish information to raise the awareness among the general public and we prepare materials which may serve as a basis for lobbying activities.
- We promote and carry out research, systematisation of information, and training in human rights.
We believe that there is a vital need for this work, defending and actively promoting human rights, at a time when they are threatened, not only by actions which violate them, but also by discourses and political actions which increasingly distort concepts and manipulate the information available.
HREV works as a network everywhere and for everywhere and this gives us the flexibility necessary to adapt to the changing situation.
Our office is virtual but our actions are very real and are based on the experience of the members of the association, gained through extensive field work in conflict zones and areas where human rights are under threat.
Fidel Mingorance
fidel@hrev.org
With an academic’s patience but a fieldworker’s energy, Fidel Mingorance is HREV’s director and a researcher. Although his first maps were topographical and geography his formal field of study, it was concern about the landscape of violence and human rights which, after study with the UNESCO Chair of Peace and Human Rights in Barcelona, drew him to travel to Colombia in 1999 to work on the ground with threatened human rights defenders and with peace communities in the midst of war.
From 1999 to 2002, he worked in Colombia in various teams of Peace Brigades International (PBI), mainly in Medellín.
At the end of this period, Fidel formed the organisation Human Rights Everywhere, in 2003, with a group of human rights defenders, with the aim of continuing to work on this issue in Europe.
At the moment, as well as leading HREV, he is continuing with his geography studies, with the happy idea of combining the applications, analysis and knowledge of geography with the defence of human rights.
Flaminia Minelli
flaminia@hrev.org
Flaminia Minelli’s commitment to the active defence of human rights is as intense as her work with organisations operating in this sphere. She is currently an independent advisor on human rights issues, research and facilitation of peace processes. In the last 12 years she has taken part in long-term missions in Guatemala, Afghanistan, Bosnia Herzegovina, Kosovo, Burundi and Colombia.
Flaminia has worked for a range of UN agencies and programmes, as well as with the International Refugee Committee and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
In 2003, after her time in Colombia, where she witnessed at first hand the vulnerability of the civilian population in various regions of the country, she formed Human Rights Everywhere, together with other human rights defenders.
Hélène Le Du
helene@hrev.org
Never let a Bretonne with a thirst for discovery leave her world of sea and wind. It is likely that she will never return, propelled by these fierce winds. Hélène Le Du opened the door to the wider world in 1991, and has never closed it since.
First Germany, then Africa and after that Colombia, and in between, many other destinations in a search related to human rights protection. Hélène is a jurist linguist at the European Union’s Court of Justice, in Luxembourg, and a founder of Human Rights Everywhere. She has worked with Amnesty International and Peace Brigades and although Yann, a little international Breton, and her work take up her time and energy, she finds much of her life’s meaning in HREV and in the effort to promote and defend human rights.
Vemund Olsen
vemundo@hrev.org
Vemund has been a member of the Human Rights Everywhere team since the Desecrated Land 2 project began, contributing particularly to the area of indigenous peoples' rights. As a field volunteer with Peace Brigades International in Colombia (2001-2003), accompanying human rights defenders and peace communities in Medellin, and in the Urabá and Medio Atrato regions, he witnessed how economic interests can cause serious human rights violations. Since then, he has devoted himself to working for traditional communities whose rights are threatened by economic megaprojects.
He has a masters in human rights from the University of Oslo, specialising in indigenous rights. He has worked in Venezuela for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and, at the moment, works as a political adviser to the Rainforest Foundation Norway, an NGO dedicated to the protection of tropical rainforests and the promotion of the human rights of the communities living in them.