In Mexico, the number of murders by unknown perpetrators and recorded disappearances reportedly reached hundreds of thousands since the 1960s. Only in the last two years, this number exceeded twenty thousand. Thousands of women who attended the march organized on Mother's Day this year by ‘the Mothers of the Disappeared’ movement, called out their children's names. The mothers say they assume Mother's Day as the mourning day, and they will not give up their demand for their children to be found and justice to be served.

The residents of Dağyeni village in the Germencik district of Aydın, Turkey, do not want gold to be mined with cyanide in the lands where they live. The villagers, who said drilling in their fig orchards and forests would damage their crops and pollute their drinking water, resisted and won. Construction machinery and equipment were removed, and explorations ended.

The Taliban, who took power in Afghanistan, quickly initiated actions restricting women's rights and freedoms. Women, taking great risks, are organizing protests to reclaim their rights to education, work, political participation, and freedom to dress. Unable to find the support they expected from the international community, Afghan women are taking the streets with slogans “Bread, work, freedom, political participation” and “Women's rights are human rights”.

The state of New York in the United States witnessed nail salon workers' protests asserting their rights. Workers fight against inequalities in wages, health and safety conditions, raising the issue that existing laws and regulations are not applied in nail salons, where mostly immigrants work.

Due to the exorbitant increase in dormitory and house rents in Turkey, university students who cannot afford the places they would stay throughout their education started the “We can't shelter” movement. Students took the streets in many cities to voice their demands for rights, despite police repression and detention practices.

In Brazil, nearly 200 different indigenous groups were represented this year at the Free Land Camp, which is held annually to save the culture and way of life of indigenous peoples. The participants of the ten-day camp raised their voices to create awareness about the environment, defend land rights, oppose the government bill that allows mining and oil exploration in their lands.

In Poland, ‘Polish Grannies’ organize weekly demonstrations in the capital Warsaw counteracting both the ruling Law and Justice Party's and the society's repressive, anti-democratic and violent attitudes toward LGBTQI+ community. Courageous grannies gather in the city square and defend the rights of their grandchildren with rainbow flags in their hands.

In Turkey, the locals keeping watch against cutting of trees for coal extraction and expansion of mining sites in the Akbelen Forest in Milas have been resisting for more than a year. Although more than 100 lawsuits were filed to cancel the regulation amendment that opens olive groves to mining and despite the Council of State decision on stay of execution, the company did not leave the area, hence the locals do not give up the ‘tree watch' to prevent the company from initiating a tree slaughter at the first opportunity.

In the UK, secondary school teacher Zahra Bei started the movement ‘No More Exclusions’ against exclusion and forced drop-out of students from disadvantaged groups. Bei and her colleagues are working on teacher training and curriculum revision to ensure racial justice in education.

In Turkey, motorcycle delivery workers of various online shopping companies stopped their engines to protest the low increase in their wages. Drawing attention to their difficult working conditions by saying “We can't get by, we can't survive”, the workers managed to establish a strong solidarity network in many cities to make their demands heard.

Mass protests started in the United States, where the 1973 law on right to abortion was put up for debate. After the Supreme Court overturned the law recognizing the right to abortion, some states repealed the related law, and one state banned abortion. Hundreds of thousands of women of all ages rallied to protest 40 million women being stripped away their right to abortion and subsequent shutting down of abortion clinics. With the slogan “We will not go back,” women demanded that abortion, as an earned right, is practiced in all states.

After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Russian government banned the use of the word “war” and has censored all news about anti-war protests. Anti-war demonstrations are suppressed with police violence; news media and many civil society organizations working in the field of human rights have been closed down and silenced. There were and continue to be many detentions but people including artists, teachers, journalists and activists have not given up employing creative means to say no to war.

In Turkey, upon the sentencing of Gezi Park defendants to imprisonment, environmental activists, architects, academics, politicians, artists, writers, international professional organizations, and numerous people and groups fighting for democracy, justice and freedom rallied in various cities in support of "We Defend Gezi" movement. The support for the rights advocates, who were remanded with political -not legal- decisions without concrete evidence, continued with vigils for justice.