After CFJ Co-Founder George Clooney issued highly publicized calls for a boycott of hotels controlled by the Sultan of Brunei to protest new laws that would have allowed gay men to be stoned to death in Brunei, Brunei backed off on enforcement of the law.
CFJ participated in a landmark case before the African Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights to challenge Tanzania’s policy of expelling and banning married and pregnant girls from school. This policy impacts more than 1 in 4 Tanzanian girls who are either pregnant or married before the age of 18. After the case was initiated the government announced a reversal of...
In Nigeria, TrialWatch monitored the first case to be tried under the country’s draconian ‘Same Sex Marriage Prevention Act,’ which criminalizes direct or indirect “public show of same sex amorous relationship” with up to ten years imprisonment. While the case, brought against 47 men arrested at a hotel bar, was eventually struck out, TrialWatch reporting exposed its abusive nature.
Several...
In Russia, TrialWatch published a preliminary report on the case against LGBTQ+ activist Yulia Tsvetkova, after which she was acquitted. Ms. Tsvetkova, a 26-year-old women’s and LGBTQ+ rights activist from Siberia, was charged with pornography for posting artistic images of female genitalia as part of a body-positive women’s empowerment campaign and faced up to six years in prison.
Our report...
Evelyn Hernandez was prosecuted for aggravated homicide based on an obstetric emergency she suffered while giving birth. TrialWatch monitored her case, and she was ultimately acquitted. CFJ did not stop there and intervened in support of Salvadorian women more broadly in a landmark case before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights challenging El Salvador’s prosecution of women who...
Polish LGBTQ+ rights activists who were prosecuted for depicting the Virgin Mary with a rainbow halo on posters had their acquittal upheld by an appeals court following TrialWatch monitoring and TrialWatch Expert Professor Lisa Davis giving the trial a grade of “D”. One of the activists, Anna Prus, told the Clooney Foundation for Justice they all felt compelled...
Evidence submitted by CFJ and Foro Penal in Venezuela will contribute to the first-ever ICC investigation in a Latin American country.
CFJ and Venezuelan human rights organization Foro Penal submitted a dossier of evidence to the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to support investigations against crimes against humanity, torture, arbitrary detention and sexual abuse committed by...
Ugandan women’s rights activist Dr. Stella Nyanzi’s conviction was overturned on the basis of violations identified by a TrialWatch report submitted to a Ugandan appeals court.
Dr. Nyanzi was prosecuted for posting a poem critical of the Ugandan President on Facebook in a trial which TrialWatch monitored and graded a “D”.
In Russia, TrialWatch secured a key decision from the UN on the persecution of Crimean Tatars. Server Mustafayev, a 32-year-old Crimean human rights defender, was prosecuted and convicted before a military court for membership in a terrorist organization: the charges were based on his involvement in Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamic political group that is banned in Russia but operates...
In Indonesia, TrialWatch reporting helped secure the acquittal of a Catholic woman unfairly targeted by the State. Suzethe Margaret, who had previously been diagnosed with schizophrenia, was charged with blasphemy after she ‘heard voices’ telling her that her husband was getting married at a mosque and, under this delusion, entered the mosque with her shoes on and with her...
The presence of a monitor in the courtroom during the trial of 33-year-old indigenous land rights advocate Abelino Chub in Guatemala likely contributed to his acquittal after two years in detention, according to Chub’s lawyer. He was charged with aggravated usurpation and arson for allegedly burning trees and fields on a plantation run by a large banana and palm...
In Uganda, TrialWatch helped secure the dropping of charges against Nicholas Opiyo, a prominent human rights lawyer. Mr. Opiyo was charged with money laundering – an example of how sometimes the charges brought can be a smokescreen for the true motivation of the trial.
TrialWatch reviewed the charge sheet and issued a statement raising concerns about the lack of...
In Uganda, TrialWatch helped secure the dismissal of charges in proceedings against 67 people following a raid on an LGBTQ+-friendly bar. From 2019 to 2022, TrialWatch sent monitors to observe the proceedings, and reported on the fact that the process was clearly motivated by homophobia as well as exposing serious fair trial violations in a report.
Among other things, the...
Askhat Zheksebaev, a 47-year-old opposition activist from Kazakhstan, was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison for peaceful social media posts and private messages in support of an opposition party. His sentence was later commuted to a suspended sentence but he was banned from public activism, had his assets frozen, and was subject to severe restrictions on movement....
Journalist and opposition figure Omoyele Sowore, who was detained and charged with conspiracy to commit treason after calling for a peaceful political revolution, was freed and awarded damages in Nigeria after TrialWatch monitored his trial and published a report on his case.
The report found the authorities offered shifting justifications for pursuing the case and that the charges appeared...