” I see people suffering and it’s just my duty as a human being to care… “
The Meron Estefanos foundation was founded by Meron Estefanos who is an Eritrean-Swedish human rights defender and journalist.
Meron has been fighting for the rights of kidnapped refugees, and negotiating their release for over 17 years, supporting an estimated number thousands refugees mainly from Eritrea and Ethiopia. Her work has been profiled by Israeli filmmaker Keren Shayo, in the documentary Sound of Torture. Estefanos is also co-founder of the International Commission on Eritrean Refugees (ICER) in Stockholm, Sweden, was the host and presenter of Radio Erena’s weekly program, “Voices of Eritrean Refugees” between 2010-2019 and a regular contributor to the leading exiled Eritrean news site Asmarino between 2007-2013. She has co-authored a number of papers documenting human trafficking in the Sinai, of which Eritrean nationals are the primary victims, and the conditions of Eritrean refugees in Tigray.
Meron Estefanos has been the director of the Eritrean Initiative on Refugee Rights and has worked as a radio presenter for over 12 years. In 2008, Estefanos ran a radio phone-in-show from her home in Stockholm, Sweden, to reach Eritreans, especially migrants crossing the Mediterranean, or victims of kidnapping held for ransom in the Sinai Peninsula. Her show was aired every week and heard by an estimated 500.000 inside Eritrea, and was the subject of a documentary, Sound of Torture, released in 2013.
In 2015, Estefanos negotiated for the release of hundreds of Eritrean migrants trafficked in Sinai.
