Sahar Francis
Sahar Francis is a Palestinian human rights defender and the General Director of the Palestinian human rights organisation Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association. Sahar Francis is a lawyer and has worked for years promoting human rights in the face of Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territory. As a Director of Addameer, she focuses on the political and civil rights issues in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, especially those of Palestinian prisoners and detainees.
Human rights defenders in the OPT are subjected to acts of harassment, restrictions on freedom of movement, stigmatisation, abductions, long periods of arbitrary detention usually under administrative detention orders, illegal searches of their homes and offices and killings. Many of the violations are state-sanctioned, or if not sanctioned at the highest levels of the Israeli political and military establishment, then condoned by the ongoing policy of impunity which permeates the military and judicial system in relation to the OPT. In some instances Israeli settlers have also been the perpetrators of violence against human rights defenders.
