Portugal: Murdered Mozambican lawyer wins NGO’s Nelson Mandela prize

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Portugal: Murdered Mozambican lawyer wins NGO’s Nelson Mandela prize

6:12 CAT | 17 May 2025

With the choice of this year's award winner, ProPública - Direito e Cidadania wanted to "honour the example of a lawyer who lost his life while carrying out his duties", but also to "express (...) solidarity with Mozambican lawyers and, in general, with African lawyers who carry out extraordinarily important duties in the defence of human rights", doing this work "in very, very difficult circumstances", Afostinho Miranda said. [Photo: Indico]

Mozambican lawyer Elvino Dias, who was murdered in Mozambique in 2024 while representing the country’s presidential candidate Venâncio Mondlane, is this year’s winner of Portuguese NGO ProPública’s Nelson Mandela Award, the association’s president told Lusa.

“This year’s recipient of the Nelson Mandela Award is lawyer Elvino Dias, who was murdered in October last year while he was representing Venâncio Mondlane, a candidate in Mozambique’s presidential elections,” said Agostinho Pereira de Miranda, president of ‘ProPublica/Law and Citizenship’ in an interview with Lusa.

With the choice of this year’s award winner, the association wanted to “honour the example of a lawyer who lost his life while carrying out his duties”, but also to “express (…) solidarity with Mozambican lawyers and, in general, with African lawyers who carry out extraordinarily important duties in the defence of human rights”, doing this work “in very, very difficult circumstances”, he added.

Arguing that “a lawyer can never be confused with the interests of his client”, because “lawyers represent people and not causes, which belong to their clients”, the president of PorPública – Direito e Cidadania emphasised that it would not be “even legitimate” to say that the murder of Elvino Dias was motivated by political convictions.

“In fact, we don’t even know what his political convictions were,” he emphasised.

Agostinho Miranda said that Elvino Dias “was murdered because he represented someone uncomfortable with power” and he was murdered in a way that the Mozambican Judges Association considered ‘heinous’.

The Mozambican lawyer was the representative of the Democratic Alliance Coalition (CAD) and legal advisor to the then presidential candidate Venâncio Mondlane and, a few days before the murder, he had publicly announced that he was collecting evidence of the electoral fraud claimed by his constituent.

For Agostinho Miranda, what Elvino Dias demonstrated “was a characteristic that no lawyer can fail to have, civic, physical and moral courage”, qualities that marked his career, as well as “pride in what he did, despite having been threatened repeatedly”, and persistence, because he never gave up on cases, “whether they were of national importance, as was the case with the representation of candidate Venâncio Mondlane, or small cases of petty disputes between neighbours”.

The Mozambican lawyer and Podemos leader Paulo Guambe were shot dead in the same ambush on Joaquim Chissano Avenue, in the centre of Maputo, in October last year, a crime that the Mozambican attorney general’s office said is still being investigated, but has yet to produce any results.

Agostinho Miranda recalled that the international community, specifically the International Bar Association (IBA), which represents more than a million lawyers around the world, had asked for an international investigation into the case in the middle of the election period.

“But what we see, seven months later, is that there are no useful results from the investigations,” he emphasised.

This crime has been condemned by the secretary-general of the United Nations, the president of the European Commission, several governments, including Mozambique’s, and multiple international professional and human rights organisations. Mozambique’s Bar Association labelled it a ‘barbaric murder’, ProPública said in a statement released on Saturday (see below).

Now, “Elvino Dias’ voice has fallen silent, but his example of courage, independence and integrity will continue to inspire lawyers in Mozambique and around the world”, it said.

The prize, worth €10,000, will be awarded on 18 July, Nelson Mandela International Day, which celebrates the birth date of the man who put an end to the apartheid regime in South Africa.

Agostinho Miranda said that Elvino EIS’s family would be present and that the figures would be given to his widow.

ProPública is the first Portuguese NGO dedicated to public interest law, promoting justice, community rights and responsibility

Previous editions of the Nelson Mandela Prize have honoured lawyers Francisco Teixeira da Mota (2021), Leonor Caldeira (2022), Maria Clotilde Almeida and Paula Penha Gonçalves ex aequo (2023) and António Garcia Pereira (2024).

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