This year, the Martin Ennals Foundation celebrates the 30^th anniversary of the Martin Ennals Award, a prestigious distinction awarded by ten of the leading human rights organizations in the world. The ceremony in honor of the 2024 Laureates took place in Geneva on November 21^st. The Foundation is now continuing the 2024 festivities with a series of portraits of some of the most outstanding human rights defenders whom the Jury considered. 

Nast Loika is a Belarusian Human Rights Defender and a co-founder of the organisation Human Constanta. Up until her arrest in October 2022 and subsequent sentencing to 7 years of imprisonment in June 2023, on false charges of “incitement of racial, national, religious or other social enmity or discord”, she has been fighting authoritarianism, political repressions and human rights abuses in her country. While Nasta has worked for a range of organisations like Solidarnasc and Viasna, defending civil and political rights, Human Constanta has addressed the human rights violations of an oft forgotten segment of the Belarusian population: migrants.

–> STAY TUNED FOR NASTA’S FULL STORY AND INTERVIEW, WHICH WILL BE PUBLISHED HERE SHORTLY