Hassan Shire is the Executive Director of DefendDefenders and has steered the organisation through its growth over the years. He is also the Chairperson of AfricanDefenders (Pan-African Human Rights Defenders Network).
Shire is a human rights defender from Somalia, with over 20 years’ experience working in the region. While in Canada, he worked with the Centre for Refugee Studies at York University and Amnesty International Canada to create the African Human Rights Defenders Project. In 2005, he returned to Africa and founded DefendDefenders in Uganda. Shire has been instrumental in building coalitions for the protection of human rights defenders in the East and Horn of Africa, namely in Burundi, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, South Sudan, and Somalia/Somaliland.
Shire regularly engages with African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, United Nations Human Rights Council, the Community of Democracies, government authorities, and African and foreign diplomatic missions for the advancement of human rights in Africa. He is currently Vice Chair of the Board of Directors of the Centre for Civil and Political Rights (Geneva, Switzerland), board member of the Institute of Human Rights and Democracy in Africa (Banjul, The Gambia), and Board Chair of the African Center for Justice and Peace and Studies (Kampala, Uganda).
Shire has received numerous awards from the international community including the U.S. State Department’s 2011 Human Rights Defender Award, the Leadership Awards of the Pan African Human Rights Defenders Network in 2015, and the Richard C. Holbrooke Leadership Award by Refugees International in 2017.