Ali Idrissa

Niger, CAHR, Autumn 2019

My activism started when my cousin got killed by police bullets during student protests in February 1990. It led me to join and later lead the key Nigerien student movement which in the late nineties resulted in founding the most important human rights organisation in Niger, called CROISADE.

My name is Ali Idrissa and I am a proud and determined Nigerien Human Rights Defender and anti-corruption activist. I am dedicating my life to ensure that natural resources are managed in the interest of and for the benefit of our people.

With my fellow activists, we are committed to help resolve the so-called ‘resource-curse’: bad governance of public resources and fighting for tax justice. While Niger’s uranium lights the Eiffel Tower and one in three households in France, ninety percent of the households in Niger don’t have access to electricity. The ‘Don’t touch my uranium’ campaign - which I helped design and co-lead - has mobilised communities, artists, parliamentarians, and (international) civil society to campaign for good governance in the gas, oil and mining sector, particularly of the French nuclear giant Areva (now ORANO). Our work has resulted in a new Mining Code (2006), a new constitution (2010) that states that natural resources belong to the people, and fierce contractual renegotiations between 2013 and 2015 with Areva.

While Niger’s uranium lights the Eiffel Tower and one in three households in France, ninety percent of the households in Niger don’t have access to electricity.

While Niger has a dynamic and engaged civil society the context has been tainted by political instability, intimidation, harassment and arrest. As the result of a recent multi-million-dollar corruption and financial flow scandal called ‘Uraniumgate’, together with other civil society leaders, we have filed a legal complaint against X to force the authorities to investigate. It intensified the threats against me and others and ultimately led to my imprisonment for four months in 2018 when we exercised our constitutional right to peaceful assembly.

I am using my time in York to advance my professional skills as a human rights defender.