In solidarity with all oppressed peoples for the common pursuit of justice and freedom for all.
About us
Together for the common pursuit of justice
Solidarity Rising started as an idea to bring people and movements together for the common pursuit of justice. We consist of activists from all walks of life working together with the belief that we are stronger and more successful when we join forces and link up our struggles.
We campaign, fundraise, walk, bike, dance and struggle together to advance human rights.
Team
Activists from all walks of life working together with the belief that we are stronger and more successful when we join forces and link up our struggles.
Benjamin Ladraa, Founder
Benjamin is a Swedish human rights defender and founder of Solidarity Rising. Together with Sanna Ghotbi he’s currently biking 48.000km to raise awareness about Western Sahara – the last colony in Africa.
Some of his previous projects include:
WalktoPalestine – A 5000km walk from Sweden to Palestine in order to raise awareness about the occupation of Palestine and human rights violations committed by Israel.
Bike4Gaza – a 2000km bike ride through Sweden to raise funds for the Palestine Children’s Relief fund and their work to provide Palestinian children with prosthetics and rehabilitation.
SolidarityRiding – a 500km ride through France to raise funds for the PCRF and the Sahrawi Red Crescent and their work to provide refugees with basic food and medicine in the Sahrawi refugee camps.
Sista Klivet – a 500km walk from Gothenburg to Stockholm to demand amnesty for refugees in Sweden.
Sanna Ghotbi, Co-lead
Sanna is a human rights activist from Gothenburg, Sweden. She is one of the people currently biking 48.000km in the Bike4WesternSahara project.
She was elected in the city council of Gothenburg where she put forward many policy changes for the rights of undocumented migrants, unaccompanied refugee youth and women suffering domestic abuse.
She has worked with indigenous groups in Ecuador and Colombia. She co-founded the Digidem Lab that works with promoting participatory democracy, increasing citizen’s power of local decision-making in places like New York, Chicago and Sweden focusing on underfunded communities, youth and people of color.
Her main passion is to change the way democracy works so that those that are most affected by political decisions are the ones making them.
Meriem Naili
Meriem Naili is a PhD candidate at the University of Exeter (United Kingdom) in Security, Conflict and Human Rights. She holds a master’s degree in Public International Law from the University of Grenoble (France) and Amsterdam (The Netherlands).
She is a member of the steering committee of the International Academic Observatory on Western Sahara (OUISO) at the University of Paris Descartes and Western Sahara Campaign UK.
Her research focuses on the absence of human rights monitoring mechanisms within the MINURSO mandate and its impact(s) on the evolution and resolution of the conflict in Western Sahara. She is specifically interested in the issue of access to natural resources and in December 2019 published an article on the legal battle over the resources at the EU level.
She is also the author of a book chapter on ‘The legal aspects of the functioning of the UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara’ and an article about defeating illegal trade in Western Sahara.
Meriem has been invited to speak in Conflict Analysis modules at the Open University of Barcelona, the University of West England, Bristol and La Sorbonne University in Paris.
Theo Aalders
Theo Aalders is a Postdoctoral fellow at Bonn University, Department of Geography. As part of his work for the Collaborative Research Centre “Future Rural Africa” he studies geographies of the future of unbuilt and unfinished hydropower projects in East Africa.
He collaborates with artists and local communities to create collaborative comics and art works as a methodological entry point to researching futures.
Sidahmed Jouli
Sidahmed Jouly is a saharawi activist and campaigner based in the saharawi refugee camps in South-west of Algeria.
He’s worked with several respected international NGOs, including Oxfam, in the Sahrawi refugee camps and is deeply involved in the Sahrawi civil society.
Sidahmed holds a Master degree in international relations from Chlef university in Algeria.
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