2025 FREEDOM CHALLENGE
You - our rangatahi - are today’s agents of change.
Your voice is powerful.
Your knowledge is powerful.
Your existence is powerful.
We here at Amnesty International Aotearoa New Zealand want to support and equip you in your activism journey, so that you can use your power to seek meaningful change. To raise awareness, to inspire action, and to be beacons of hope.
That’s why we created the annual Freedom Challenge!
Freedom Challenge is a call to action for young people across Aotearoa New Zealand. It is an opportunity for rangatahi to apply their leadership, creativity, and visions for justice by standing together against a pressing human rights issue.
Each year, we launch a campaign that is important and relevant to youth.
This year’s Freedom Challenge theme is “I turned my fear into courage” - Challenging the Philippines ‘red-tagging’ of young Human Rights Defenders. It focuses on the Philippines state targeting of young human rights defenders with accusations of being communist or terrorist, referred to as ‘red-tagging’. This leads to targeting and persecution both on and offline from everybody from state actors to members of the public simply for their human rights activism.
“I turned my fear into courage”
Young Human Rights Defenders in the Philippines have for decades been at the forefront of protesting for human rights. But they are also particularly at risk, both physically and digitally, at the hand of state actors. Key to this coordinated campaign of state violence is the practice of “red-tagging”.
Red Tagging has created a climate of fear and intimidation amongst young people by equating their peaceful protests and human rights advocacy with sedition and terrorism.
State actors including leading political figures and authorities usered-tagging as a dog whistle to incite violence and discrimination against young advocates engaged in diverse human rights causes and against student journalists.
That violence and discrimination has seen young advocates under surveillance and harassed by members of the security forces, facing legal harassment, arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances and even death.
Within this year’s Freedom Challenge we highlight the urgent need for effective protections for Philippine human rights defenders who at an ever-younger age face terrible risks for speaking up for human rights. And we highlight different ways you can take action to help us build pressure on decision makers for action to stop this targeting.
See below for resources to help you. Once you have registered, we will also send out physical resources.
Sign the petition
Stop attacks on young human rights defenders in the Philippines
Student and youth activists are at the frontline of political and social change, gaining wins on the streets, in schools and in legislatures towards a society that respects, protects, and upholds human rights. But in recent years, young human rights defenders in the Philippines have come under intensified attacks in a coordinated state-led campaign of harassment and intimidation.
Join us in calling on President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and the Philippine Congress to cease these attacks and keep young human rights defenders safe.
MORE RESOURCES
“Let us remember: One book, one pen, one child, and one teacher can change the world.”
- Malala Yousafzai, Pakistani Education Activist
FREEDOM CHALLENGE: REWIND
You are never too young to take a stand for human rights.
For nearly two decades, rangatahi across the motu have taken up the Freedom Challenge and helped create lasting change.
Below are a handful of wins, amongst many, that prove that when youth like you stand together and take action, we are able to take one (or more!) steps closer to justice.
The action you took in our 2021 “Please take me to a safe place” campaign contributed to the New Zealand’s Government’s 2022 announcement to stop imprisoning people seeking asylum here in Aotearoa New Zealand.
FREEDOM CHALLENGE: PAST THEMES
