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Dutch Postcode Lottery’s Ambassadors Winston Gerschtanowitz and Martijn Krabbé with Human Rights Watch’s Netherlands Director Katrien van de Linde 2020
© Roy Beusker Fotografie
(Amsterdam) – The Dutch Postcode Lottery has reconfirmed a grant for 2020 of €1.35 million to support the work of Human Rights Watch. The lottery and its members have since 2009 provided critically important help for Human Rights Watch to carry out its research on human rights abuses worldwide and to develop human rights activities in the Netherlands.
In 2019 Human Rights Watch published the report, “From Cradle to Grave”: Discrimination and Barriers to Education for Persons with Albinism in Tete Province, Mozambique in the form of a special online feature with video and photos, thanks to support of the Dutch Postcode Lottery. Human Rights Watch found that children living with albinism in Mozambique are widely discriminated against, stigmatized, and often rejected at school, in the community, and, at times, by their own families.
“Children with albinism have the same right as everyone else to a quality education with reasonable support to facilitate their learning, yet many are relegated to the margins of society” said Shantha Rau Barriga, disability rights director at Human Rights Watch. “The Dutch Postcode Lottery’s generosity enabled us to work with local partners to bring these abuses to light and make a real difference in the lives of these children.”
Flavia Pinto, head of Azemap, a volunteer-run organization which supports people with albinism, with a toddler that she is in the process of adopting. The child’s father was convicted of attempting to sell him. © 2019 Marcus Bleasdale for Human Rights Watch
The generous new grant from the Dutch Postcode Lottery will help support and strengthen the work of Human Rights Watch to identify and document human rights abuses in countries around the world and to press for change. It will also help Human Rights Watch reach out to the public through its digital campaigns and to promote the values of justice, dignity, and equality that form the basis of human rights imperatives.
“We are extremely proud to be able to make these important donations thanks to our loyal participants,” said Dorine Manson, managing director of the Postcode Lottery. “This is what we do it for. For example, more than 100 charitable organisations, including Voedselbanken Nederland, Oranje Fonds, Het Rode Kruis, (foundation) AAP and Wereld Natuur Fonds, which are committed to a just, greener world, can strengthen their contribution to a better world”.
“Human Rights Watch thanks the Dutch Postcode Lottery and its players for their continuing generous support,” said Katrien van de Linde, Netherlands director at Human Rights Watch. “This continuing partnership is very important to us as it supports our efforts to defend the rights of the world’s most marginalized people globally.”
