Gender-Based Violence
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This Week’s Spotlight on Human Rights
Tags Share This Pride, Embody the True Spirit of Queer Liberation As we enter another Pride Month overrun with corporate rainbows and empty overtures, it’s important to remember that Pride started as a protest — a riot, to be more specific. On a hot June day in 1969 when the New York Police Department raided the popular…
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This Week’s Spotlight on Human Rights
Tags Share RFK Human Rights Award Laureate brings LGBTQ+ activism, immigration rights together in life’s work Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights’ 2024 Human Rights Award recipient Arely Westley, a trans-Latinx Honduran woman, knows well the fate of many of her sisters. She escaped from her native country of Honduras just two years after transgender activist…
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Ending Violence Against Women and Gender Inequality: Our Work and Impact
Tags Share Claudina Isabel’s body was discovered on August 13, 2005 with signs of sexual violence. The Guatemalan government’s impunity and ineffective investigation into her murder is, unfortunately, representative of a broader failure of the government to stem the tide of femicide and violence against women in the country. Read more about our work on…
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Mexico to officially recognize responsibility in emblematic, decades-long femicide case
Tags Share Today, the Mexican government is signing a compliance agreement, issuing a public apology, and recognizing their responsibility for the inaction, impunity, and negligence in the case of Silvia Elena Rivera Morales et al. v. Mexico. Ahead of the ceremony, here are five things to know about the key case. Femicide—the murder of women…
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Nearly 20 years after murder of Claudina Isabel Velásquez Paiz, Guatemalan government to publicly acknowledge responsibility March 8
Tags Share On Friday, March 8, Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo and members of his government will hold a public act to acknowledge responsibility for the murder of 19-year old Claudina Isabel Velásquez Paiz in 2005 and subsequent impunity. Here are five key things to know about the case: 1. On August 12, 2005, when Claudina…
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Trans murder in Honduras
Tags Share In 2009, 26-year-old trans woman and LGBTQ+ rights activist Vicky Hernández was murdered in Honduras during a coup d’etat perpetrated by a right-wing sector of society. For years, the legal team at Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights fought for accountability in Vicky’s case. In 2021, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights issued a…
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Cross-Regional Reflections on Violence Against Women Journalists
Tags Share On November 27th, as a part of the 16 days of activism following the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on November 25, RFK Human Rights convened a webinar to discuss violence against women journalists. The webinar served as a cross-regional platform to celebrate the work of women journalists from…
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New York Times: Court May Force Honduras to Better Protect Trans People
Tags Share Outraged by the long-ignored murder of trans activist Vicky Hernández, RFK Human Rights and Red Lésbica Cattrachas have brought her case before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights demanding the state of Honduras be held accountable. It is the first time the Inter-American Court will rule on whether governments have done enough to…
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Juliana Dogbadzi
Interview with Kerry Kennedy I have never been in a classroom. I have never been to school. When I was seven years old, my parents took me from our home and sent me to a shrine where I was a slave to a fetish priest for seventeen years. My grandfather, they said, had stolen two…
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Marina Pisklakova
Marina Pisklakova is Russia’s leading women’s rights activist. She studied aeronautical engineering in Moscow, and while conducting research at the Russian Academy of Sciences, was startled to discover that family violence had reached epidemic proportions. Because of her efforts, Russian officials started tracking domestic abuse and estimated that, in a single year, close to 15,000…
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Rana Husseini
Biography Journalist, feminist, and human rights defender, Rana Husseini broke the silence and exposed the shame of Jordan when she unveiled the common but unspoken crime of honor killings there. Honor killings happen when a woman is raped or is said to have participated in illicit sexual activity. Across the globe, women who are beaten,…
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Dianna Ortiz
Biography Dianna Ortiz is an Ursuline nun from New Mexico who journeyed to Guatemala in the early 1980s as a missionary, teaching Mayan children in the highlands. After months of receiving threats, Ortiz was abducted and brutally raped by armed men in November 1989. One of the men overseeing the torture appeared to be American.…
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