This year, KIOS has invited human rights defender and lawyer Michelle Mwelesa from KIOS grantee Civic Freedom Forum to talk about defending the civil liberties. Michelle will be interviewed by journalist Liselott Lindström. The event is on the  Sunday 17  May at 17:45 as part of the talks and discussions at the World Village Festival. The event will also be streamed online. World Village Festival is organised this year for the first time at Bio Rex and Lasipalatsikortteli. See you at the World Village festival!

Interview with Michelle Mwelesa: Lessons in defending civil liberties

When: Sun. 17.5.2026 17:45-18:10
Where: Speaker’s stage at Bio Rex (Lasipalatsikortteli, Helsinki) and Online, World Village Festival

Although civil liberties are being restricted around the world, Kenya’s civil society is growing stronger. State oppression does not silence it but rather gives rise to a new kind of courage and solidarity. How can freedom be defended when the space for them is shrinking?

Human rights defender and lawyer Michelle Mwelesa, an advocacy specialist at the Civic Freedoms Forum, explains how civil liberties are defended when laws become tools of oppression, protesting is dangerous, and the freedoms of assembly, association, and speech are restricted.

Mwelesa is interviewed by journalist Liselott Lindström, who previously lived in Nairobi.

The programme is in English and will be interpreted into sign language. You can watch the programme at the festival’s Speaker’s Stage at Bio Rex or via livestream on the festival’s website.

After the programme, you can meet and greet Michelle in the lobby next to the Speaker’s Stage at Bio Rex.

Read also Michelle’s blog that examines Kenya’s shrinking civic space, focusing on how state violence and repression of peaceful protest undermine fundamental human rights and constitutional freedoms, even as citizens continue to resist and defend them.

 Speakers:

Michelle Mwelesa

Michelle Mwelesa is a Kenyan human rights defender and lawyer who works as an advocacy specialist at the Civic Freedoms Forum, a non-governmental organisation. She works on law, public policy, and grassroots advocacy to protect fundamental rights, such as freedom of speech, association, and peaceful assembly.

I believe fighting for a free civic and democratic space promotes dignity and equality for all – an open civic space is a free society. – Michelle Mwelesa

Liselott Lindström

Liselott Lindström has been working as a freelance journalist for over eight years. She spent most of that time living in Kenya’s capital, reporting for YLE and SVT. The award-winning journalist is a geopolitical nerd and interested in how major global upheavals affect ordinary people.

In times of changing world politics, we need to humbly listen to those for whom civic freedoms have never been taken for granted. – Liselott Lindström