African Indigenous Foundation for Energy and Sustainable Development (AIFES)

The African Indigenous Foundation for Energy and Sustainable Development (AIFES) is a social movement of Ogoni people in Nigeria. Its mission  is to inspire people to protect indigenous communities from all forms of abuse. Its vision is to build a world where development is participatory and its processes impact positively on all persons.

Despite being a young organization,  AIFES is run by highly experienced human rights defenders who have been involved previously with ESCR-Net in different capacities. Also in the last two years they have managed to conduct and run successful projects. Currently, AIFES, through its Health Intervention Program, is running a media campaign on COVID, seeking to improve community awareness, prevention and sensitization on COVID-19 and  to bring the necessary information relating to the pandemic to the Ogoni Society.  It aims to pressure the government to make the vaccine available to all sections of the community. Considering the role that women play including that they also make up large parts of the health workforce and are often primary caregivers to the sick which also exposes them to greater risks of contraction of Covid-19, deliberate efforts are being  made to ensure gender-balance and promote women’s leadership in  trainings and other activities relating to this project. In addition, AIFES is running a human rights programme entitled ‘‘The Next Generation Project” which is targeted at building the capacity of school children on human rights instruments in order to prepare them into future human rights advocates particularly for the Ogoni struggle.