Lessons from a Democracy Defender

Nicholas Opiyo is an award-winning human rights attorney and democracy and justice advocate from Uganda, where he founded a civil rights charity and was targeted and attacked for his work. Nicholas has fought for electoral security, free speech and free press, and LGBTQ rights in Uganda. He was arrested in 2020 for representing Bobi Wine, the top opposition candidate to Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni. The charges were ultimately dropped, but he continues to be a target of the Ugandan regime, and to bravely speak up for justice in Uganda and around the world. He founded and served as the Executive Director and Lead Attorney at Chapter Four Uganda, a civil rights charity working to defend civil liberties for the past 13 years. He has been a visiting scholar at the Centre for African Studies, Stanford University, and the University of San Francisco (UCSF). Nicholas also served as the Board Chair of Action Aid Uganda until 2020. He was a member of the Human Rights Advisory Board BENETECH, a Silicon Valley human rights and tech company based in Palo Alto, among other roles. Until March 2017, Nicholas was a member of the Team of Experts to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights to Peaceful Assembly and Association. He is the recipient of the Human Rights Tulip Prize from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2021), the German Africa Prize (2017), the European Union Parliament Sakharov Fellows Prize (2016), and the Voices for Justice Award from Human Rights Watch (2015).

He will speak about his firsthand experience fighting for democracy and human rights in the face of oppression.

Free and open to the public.

More information here.

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