The annual Front Line Defenders Award for Human Rights Defenders at Risk was established in 2005 to honour the work of HRDs who are courageously making outstanding contributions to the promotion and protection of the human rights of others, often at great personal risk to themselves.
Ljiljana Nešić is a woman human rights defender and president of the human rights organisation Žene za mir – Women for peace. In 1994, the woman human rights defender founded the SOS telephone in Leskovac, Serbia. Since 2007, Ljiljana Nešić has been protecting women's human rights and peace activism in the fight against patriarchy, nationalism, militarism and fascism. She is a member of the Women Against Violence Network and the Resolution 1325 Network - Women, Peace and Security where she participated in the monitoring and implementation of the National Security Strategy in Serbia.
Human rights defenders in Serbia operate in a hostile environment. They are subjected to online threats, harassment, intimidation and attacks from government officials, non-state actors and pro-government media. Women and LGBTI+ rights defenders are often sexualised and are targets of misogynistic and discriminatory smear campaigns. Cases of threats, physical and verbal attacks and intimidation which are reported are often not effectively investigated, and perpetrators are rarely identified and prosecuted.
