CJA : Horn of Africa Human Rights Watch Committee (Hornwatch)

CJA : Horn of Africa Human Rights Watch Committee (Hornwatch)
Horn of Africa Human Rights Watch Committee (Hornwatch)

Hornwatch is a network of organizations bound together by common responsibilities on the promotion and protection of the universal ideals of human rights and fundamental freedoms enshrined in Islamic Shari’a, the Somaliland Bill of Rights, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and other international human rights instruments . The member organizations aim to reach their main goal through exchanging of information, developing a collective voice, amplifying their actions, and developing new tools and strategies in pursuing initiatives to protect all human rights and fundamental freedoms in Somaliland.

Hornwatch was founded in 1988 as a core action group in Djibouti by five university graduate students who had escaped the gross human rights violations and brutality of the Siad Barre regime. During the early years, Horwatch activities were concentrated on monitoring and reporting human rights violations in Somalia. Hornwatch was officially registered as non-governmental organization under Somaliland law on January 20, 1997. Hornwatch is an independent, non-governmental, non-partisan, and not-for-profit national human rights organization. Since its official establishment in 1997, Hornwatch, with the help of its partners, has been working on a national human rights agenda in Somaliland.

Hornwatch envisions a democratic, peaceful, and progressive Somaliland that fully respects the basic human rights of its citizens, recognizing the rights of the marginalized, and the excluded sectors of the society such as people with disabilities, women, youth, minorities, refugees, asylum seekers, and internally displaced persons. Hornwatch further envisions a Somaliland that fully adheres to the fundamental freedoms of a democratic society with a government that respects and complies with all the international human rights instruments, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations covenants and human rights.