Hauwa Ojeifo Honored with Inaugural Marca Bristo Fellowship by Human Rights Watch

Hauwa Ojeifo Honored with Inaugural Marca Bristo Fellowship by Human Rights Watch

Hauwa Ojeifo, a Nigerian human rights advocate has been honored with the inaugural Marca Bristo Fellowship by Human Rights Watch. Human Rights Watch met Hauwa in 2018, when she conducted a research on people living with psychosocial disabilities in Nigeria for the organization.

The Marca Bristo Fellowship is an inaugural award launched by Human Rights Watch an organization of experts, lawyers and journalists who investigate and report on human rights incidents globally. The fellowship is in memory of the late pioneering disability rights icon Marca Bristo, a tireless partner and supporter of the Human Rights Watch Disability Rights program, serving as the founding chair of its advisory committee. The fellowship will honor emerging activists for their courageous leadership in disability rights.

28 years old Hauwa was chosen among several candidates nominated by staff who have worked closely with Human Rights Watch.

“This fellowship and my partnership with Human Rights Watch means so much for me, and it’s an incredible opportunity to highlight the intersection between the rights of people with mental health conditions and women’s rights. Women with mental health conditions like myself have something to say and we are being heard. It’s empowering!” expressed Hauwa Ojeifo.

Hauwa Ojeifo is a passionate human rights advocate and a multi-award-winning certified mind and mental health and neuro-linguistic programming coach as well as an Emotional Freedom Techniques therapy practitioner. She is currently the executive director at the mental health initiative She Writes Woman, where she leads the team in creating space, mobilizing and amplifying the voices of persons with mental health conditions and psychosocial disabilities, empowering them to co-create their solutions, tell their own stories, and advocate for their own rights. She is also the lead facilitator and CEO at International Advocacy Academy Africa and an ambassador at One Young World. Hauwa is the only Nigerian female recipient of the Queen’s Young Leaders award 2018 by the Royal Commonwealth Society and the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Trust.

In February 2020, together with Human Rights Watch, Hauwa testified before the Nigerian National Assembly on a draft mental health bill. She was the first person in the country with a mental health condition to publicly urge lawmakers to ensure inclusion of people with psychosocial disabilities in creating human rights-respecting mental health legislation.

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As part of the fellowship, Hauwa will receive training on research, advocacy, communication, and fundraising from Human Rights Watch colleagues over the course of the next year. She will also participate with Human Rights Watch in a major advocacy meeting, such as the United Nations Conference of States Parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in New York, tentatively scheduled for December. She will also travel to Chicago to visit Access Living, a disability rights organization founded by Marca Bristo, where she remained president until her retirement in 2019.