Guinea-Bissau, as the rest of the world, has been hit but the COVID-19 pandemic. In order to better face the pandemic and limit its propagation, the President announced the state of emergency on March 17 for an initial period of two weeks. Since then, the state of emergency has been renewed several times and continues in vigor up until now.

In view of this, UNDP started on May 8^th, a partnership with the Human Rights League aiming at ensuring respect of the human rights in the framework of the state of emergency nationwide. More specifically, the partnership aims at contributing for the respect of the human rights through monitoring and human right protection actions mainly in the most vulnerable communities as well as identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the authorities’ interventions.

Since the beginning of the partnership, around 150 cases of human rights violations of all types have been identified: domestic violence, homicides, sexual abuses, assaults by defense and security forces against citizens and illegal detentions.

The members of the monitoring cells are 16 activists of the Human Rights League spread in all the regions of the country. Dûe to the nature of their tasks of data collection on human rights abuses, they were able to build a trust-based relationship with the communities where they are intervening, facilitating thus not only the data collection process but also the contact with local authorities.

As part of the partnership, four radio programmes are being broadcasted every week in national and community radios aiming at advocating for the respect of human rights.