Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders

As the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) began its 40th session in Geneva, the son of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, Andrew Caruana Galizia, said her targeted assassination was a culmination in failures of government protection, followed by libel suits against her estate, as reported by The Shift Team on 25 February 2019. See also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2019/02/20/human-rights-defenders-issues-in-the-40th-session-of-the-un-human-rights-council/

Caruana Galizia spoke of the difficulty in maintaining international media and political attention around cases, and how weakening multilateralism made that even harder. It has fallen on her family and her children to sustain that, he said. He spoke at HRC urging them to ensure Malta accepts specific recommendations made at the UN Universal Periodic Review (UPR) five months ago for an independent public inquiry into his mother’s death. [see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2017/12/11/maltas-aditus-foundation-urges-government-to-improve-relationship-with-human-rights-defenders/]

The NGO Article 19, which organised the panel, stressed that impunity for attacks against journalists must end. It listed worrying trends of human rights violations, all of which pose a major threat to freedom of expression globally:

• Continued impunity for attacks against journalists;
• Failures by States to combat religious intolerance, while also failing to secure the rights to freedom of religion or belief and freedom of expression;
• The abuse of counter-terrorism laws to target civil society and dissenting voices;
• Attacks against women human rights defenders and environmental and land defenders.

https://theshiftnews.com/2019/02/25/impunity-persists-son-of-murdered-journalist-tells-un-human-rights-council/