The Municipality of Eindhoven organized a meeting with Wiecza Santos in the council hall on Wednesday afternoon. Wiecza Santos is a lawyer and human rights activist from Venezuela and the first Shelter city Guest in Eindhoven.
What is the Shelter City program?
In 2012, Justice & Peace founded Shelter City as a concrete and accessible way to support human rights defenders at risk. Shelter City is a global movement of cities, organizations, and people who provide safe places to human rights defenders at risk. As part of the plan, a dutch city in the Netherlands host human rights activists from various other parts of the world for 3 months. They receive support from the host cities. Eindhoven is the 13th city in the Netherlands to support the Shelter city program.
Wiecza talked about the steady deterioration of the human rights situation in her homeland Venezuela. “We need to restore the rule of law and release all those who have been unjustly deprived of their liberty,” she said, as the audience watched a documentary on Venezuela in the present times.
The objective of supporting this movement is to enable the organizations and their members to fight to restore peace. They often risk their lives in the line of duty to bring about the desired changes.
Tjeerd Ritmeester (PvdA), Miriam Frosi CDA and Gisele Mambre (Groenlinks),among others, organized this event. Other organisations like Amnesty International, Vluchtelingen in de knel, among others were also present on this occasion.
A report by Chaitali Sengupta
