SRT Grantee News – August

Grantee news:

Programme grantees:

• ECCHR  (European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights) welcomed the ICC arrest of Khaled Mohamed Ali El Hishri in Germany. He was a Libyan official at Mitiga Prison accused of crimes against humanity and war crimes. ECCHR and partners had submitted two Article 15 Communications to the ICC documenting crimes against migrants and refugees in Libya’s detention system. This followed Italy’s failure in January to surrender another Mitiga suspect to the ICC, returning him to Libya where he was welcomed by officials and armed actors.
• Redress, Independent Medico-Legal Unit and partners helped secure 16 million Kenyan shillings in compensation for four of eight survivors of sexual violence after a 13-year legal battle. Arising from 2007–2008 post-election violence in Kenya, this landmark case led to the first compensation payments in late July 2025. SRT grantee the Independent Medico-Legal Unit and partners supported the case, while grantee Redress provided a third-party intervention on international reparations standards.
• Birdlife, EEB, and ClientEarth’s  Hands Off Nature campaign is mobilising public feedback to defend the EU’s Habitats Directive and wider nature protections. The European Commission is currently reviewing its environmental lawsand seeking input from the public. The deadline to respond is 10 September.
• Watershed Investigations are behind a new documentary, TOXIC: Britain’s forever polluted rivers and seas, which exposes PFAS contamination by testing water and wild oysters across the UK.

Gifts and Trustee Small Grantees:

• Médecins Sans Frontièresdrew international attention to Somalia’s worsening diphtheria crisis amid USAID funding cuts and vaccine shortages. The organisation also continues to report on conditions in Gaza. Citing MSF data, The Guardian noted that severe malnutrition among under-5s tripled at one clinic, with a quarter of children and pregnant or breastfeeding women now affected. With over 1,000 staff in Gaza, MSF is among the strip’s largest medical providers.
• Turquoise Mountain’s ‘Weaving Poems’ exhibition gave Afghan artisans international visibility and market access. The exhibit, currently on at Sotheby’s, was well received in the press, including in the National, and The Art Newspaper.
• The Wiener Library launched its newest exhibit, “Looted: Two Families, Nazi Theft and the Search for Restitution” documenting Austria’s complicity in Holocaust-era theft, and its failures in post-war compensation. The exhibit particularly focuses on an individual bond between two heirs – one from a survivor family and the other from a persecutor.