While China is systematically erasing the memory of the brutal repression of student protests on 4 June 1989, 14 prominent participants of that movement are still behind bars, rearrested for their struggle for democracy. Chinese Human Rights Defenders issued an appeal for their release.
“For 35 years, all top Chinese leaders, from Li Peng to Xi Jinping, have been fixated on erasing memories of June 4 by persecuting those who peacefully seek accountability,” reads the CHRD statement. “Everyone who cares about justice should call on Beijing to immediately and unconditionally release these and all other prisoners of conscience in China.”
The appeal includes a list of 27 people who, for various reasons, are still in prison in relation to the Tiananmen Square movement. “[F]ar from being complete, [. . .] it is a window to the severity, scale, and persistence of reprisals by the Chinese government over the past 35 years,” the statement reads. In particular, 14 names belong to people who participated directly in the events of 35 years ago and are currently in prison after they were rearrested for promoting democracy in China.
Zhou Guoqiang (周国强) was imprisoned for organising a strike in support of student protests in Beijing in 1989, and served four years in a re-education camp. He was arrested again for online comments in October 2023. His current whereabouts and charges remain unknown.
Guangdong activist Guo Feixiong (郭飞雄), who took part in the 1989 movement as a student in Shanghai, has been serving a six-year sentence since 2015 for his human rights activism.
Another university student from that time, Chen Shuqing (陈树庆) from Hangzhou, has been serving a 10-and-a-half-year sentence since 2016 for pro-democracy activism.
Lü Gengsong (吕耿松), a teacher fired in 1993 for supporting the pro-democracy movement, has been serving an 11-year sentence since 2016 for his pro-democracy work.
Beijing-based lawyer Xia Lin (夏霖) has been serving an 11-year sentence since 2016 for his professional work as a lawyer; he participated in the 1989 movement as a student at the Southwest Institute of Political Science and Law in Chongqing.
Xinjiang activist Zhao Haitong (赵海通) has been serving a 14-year sentence since 2014 for his activities as a human rights defender. He, too, had been imprisoned in the aftermath of the 1989 massacre.
Xu Na (许那), artist, poet, and a Falun Gong follower, took part in the hunger strike in Tiananmen Square. She was arrested in 2020 and sentenced to eight years in prison for “using an evil cult to disrupt law enforcement.”
Sichuan activist Chen Yunfei (陈云飞) served a four-year sentence from 2015 to 2019, in part for organising a commemoration for the victims of 4 June. He had participated in the 1989 movement as a student at the China Agricultural University in Beijing.
Another member of the student movements at the time, Xu Guang (徐光), was arrested in 2022 and is serving a four-year sentence on charges of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province.
Huang Xiaomin (黄晓敏), who was arrested in Sichuan province in 2021, suffered th same fate, and was sentenced to four years, while CaoPeizhi (曹培植) was arrested in 2022 and sentenced to 2.2 years in Henan province.
Zhang Zhongshun (张忠顺), another student who participated in the 1989 protests, was reported to police in 2007 for talking to his students about the events of 4 June. He was jailed for three years and is now in jail for continuing to support activism and faces charges of subversion in Shandong province.
Wang Yifei (王一飞) disappeared into police custody after he was detained in 2021. Before his arrest in 2018, he had been demanding justice for the victims of 1989 for several years.
Shi Tingfu (史庭福), already convicted of organiing a public vigil in Nanjing in 2017 and giving a speech in memory of the victims of Tiananmen, was rearrested in January 2024 and is awaiting trial on several charges, including “spreading false information, and inciting terrorism and extremism in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.”
The other 13 names belong to people who were not directly involved in the events of 1989 in Beijing, but fought in mainland China and Hong Kong to keep alive the memory of what happened.
This second list includes Tong Hao (仝浩), a young doctor born in 1987, who was jailed for 1.5 years for publishing a post on 4 June 2020. He was arrested in August 2023 and has been in police custody in Jiangsu province ever since.
Some of the jailed are dissidents in Hong Kong, like Lee Cheuk-yan, Albert Ho, and Chow Hang-tung; the latter, a lawyer, was recently issued a new arrest warrant in prison together with seven other people (including her mother) for commemorating the Tainanmen massacre online.
As Chinese Human Rights Defenders note, three witnesses to events in Tianamen Square have died in prison in the past 35 years. The most prominent is Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo (刘晓波), who died in July 2017 from liver cancer in police custody while serving an 11-year sentence since 2009 for his role as a leader in the Charter 08 campaign. A university lecturer in 1989, he was jailed for 18 months for taking part in the 1989 movement.
Jiangsu writer Yang Tongyan (杨同彦) died a few months after Liu, in November 2017, from a brain tumor. He was serving a 12-year sentence imposed in 2006 for his political activism. He had already spent 10 years in prison for taking part in the 1989 movement.
Last but not least, we must remember labour activist LiWangyang (李旺阳), who died under suspicious circumstances on 6 June 2012 while in a hospital guarded by police in Shaoyang, Hunan province. Li, leader of the 1989 pro-democracy movement, was sentenced to a total of 23 years in prison. Chinese authorities claimed he committed suicide by hanging himself in his hospital room, a claim his family has disputed since Li was blind and deaf from torture and would not have been physically able to hang himself. Against the wishes of Li’s family, Hunan authorities conducted their own autopsy and then cremated the body.
Mozilla is highlighting each year the work of 25 digital leaders using technology to amplify voices, effect change, and build new technologies globally through its Rise 25 Awards. On 13 May 2024 was the turn of Raphael Mimoun, a builder dedicated to making tools that empower journalists and human rights defenders. Aron Yohannes talked with Raphael about the launch of his app, Tella, combatting misinformation online, the future of social media platforms and more.
Raphael Mimoun: So I never worked in tech per se and only developed a passion for technology as I was working in human rights. It was really a time when, basically, the power of technology to support movements and to head movements around the world was kind of getting fully understood. You had the Arab Spring, you had Occupy Wall Street, you had all of these movements for social justice, for democracy, for human rights, that were very much kind of spread through technology, right? Technology played a very, very important role. But just after that, it was kind of like a hangover where we all realized, “OK, it’s not just all good and fine.” You also have the flip side, which is government spying on the citizens, identifying citizens through social media, through hacking, and so on and so forth — harassing them, repressing them online, but translating into offline violence, repression, and so on. And so I think that was the moment where I was like, “OK, there is something that needs to be done around technology,” specifically for those people who are on the front lines because if we just treat it as a tool — one of those neutral tools — we end up getting very vulnerable to violence, and it can be from the state, it can also be from online mobs, armed groups, all sort of things.
There’s so much misinformation out there now that it’s so much harder to tell the difference between what’s real and fake news. Twitter was such a reliable tool of information before, but that’s changed. Do you think that any of these other platforms can be able to help make up for so much of the misinformation that is out there?
I think we all feel the weight of that loss of losing Twitter. Twitter was always a large corporation, partially owned by a billionaire. It was never kind of a community tool, but there was still an ethos, right? Like a philosophy, or the values of the platform were still very much like community-oriented, right? It was that place for activists and human rights defenders and journalists and communities in general to voice their opinions. So I think that loss was very hard on all of us.
I see a lot of misinformation on Instagram as well. There is very little moderation there. It’s also all visual, so if you want traction, you’re going to try to put something that is very spectacular that is very eye catchy, and so I think that leads to even more misinformation.
I am pretty optimistic about some of the alternatives that have popped up since Twitter’s downfall. Mastodon actually blew up after Twitter, but it’s much older — I think it’s 10 years old by now. And there’s Bluesky. So I think those two are building up, and they offer spaces that are much more decentralized with much more autonomy and agency to users. You are more likely to be able to customize your feeds. You are more likely to have tools for your own safety online, right? All of those different things that I feel like you could never get on Threads, on Instagram or on Twitter, or anything like that. I’m hoping it’s actually going to be able to recreate the community that is very much what Twitter was. It’s never going to be exactly the same thing, but I’m hoping we will get there. And I think the fact that it is decentralized, open source and with very much a philosophy of agency and autonomy is going to lead us to a place where these social networks can’t actually be taken over by a power hungry billionaire.
What do you think is the biggest challenge that we face in the world this year on and offline, and then how do you think we can combat it?
I don’t know if that’s the biggest challenge, but one of the really big challenges that we’re seeing is how the digital is meeting real life and how people who are active online or on the phone on the computer are getting repressed for that work in real life. So we developed an app called Tella, which encrypts and hides files on your phone, right? So you take a photo or a video of a demonstration or police violence, or whatever it is, and then if the police tries to catch you and grab your phone to delete it, they won’t be able to find it, or at least it will be much more difficult to find it. Or it would be uploaded already. And things like that, I think is one of the big things that we’re seeing again. I don’t know if that the biggest challenge online at the moment, but one of the big things we’re seeing is just that it’s becoming completely normalized to grab someone’s phone or check someone’s computer at the airport, or at the border, in the street and go through it without any form of accountability. People have no idea what the regulations are, what the rules are, what’s allowed, what’s not allowed. And when they abuse those powers, is there any recourse? Most places in the world, at least, where we are working, there is definitely no recourse. And so I think that connection between thinking you’re just taking a photo for social media but actually the repercussion is so real because you’re going to have someone take your phone, and maybe they’re going to delete the photo, or maybe they’re going to detain you. Or maybe they’re going to beat you up — like all of those different things. I think this is one of the big challenges that we’re seeing at the moment, and something that isn’t traditionally thought of as an internet issue or an online digital rights issue because it’s someone taking a physical device and looking through it. It often gets overlooked, and then we don’t have much kind of advocacy around it, or anything like that.
What do you think is one action everybody can take to make the world and our lives online a little bit better?
I think social media has a lot of negative consequences for everyone’s mental health and many other things, but for people who are active and who want to be active, consider social networks that are open source, privacy-friendly and decentralized. Bluesky, the Fediverse —including Mastodon — are examples because I think it’s our responsibility to kind of build up a community there, so we can move away from those social media platforms that are owned by either billionaires or massive corporations, who only want to extract value from us and who spy on us and who censor us. And I feel like if everyone committed to being active on those social media platforms — one way of doing that is just having an account, and whatever you post on one, you just post on the other — I feel like that’s one thing that can make a big difference in the long run.
We started Rise25 to celebrate Mozilla’s 25th anniversary. What do you hope that people are celebrating in the next 25 years?
I was talking a little bit earlier about how we are building a culture that is more privacy-centric, like people are becoming aware, becoming wary about all these things happening to the data, the identity, and so on. And I do think we are at a turning point in terms of the technology that’s available to us, the practices and what we need as users to maintain our privacy and our security. I feel like in honestly not even 25, I think in 10 years, if things go well — which it’s hard to know in this field — and if we keep on building what we already are building, I can see how we will have an internet that is a lot more privacy-centric where communications are by default are private. Where end-to-end encryption is ubiquitous in our communication, in our emailing. Where social media isn’t extractive and people have actual ownership and agency in the social network networks they use. Where data mining is no longer a thing. I feel like overall, I can see how the infrastructure is now getting built, and that in 10,15 or 25 years, we will be in a place where we can use the internet without having to constantly watch over our shoulder to see if someone is spying on us or seeing who has access and all of those things.
Lastly, what gives you hope about the future of our world?
That people are not getting complacent and that it is always people who are standing up to fight back. We’re seeing it at. We saw it at Google with people standing up as part of No Tech for Apartheid coalition and people losing the jobs. We’re seeing it on university campuses around the country. We’re seeing it on the streets. People fight back. That’s where any change has ever come from: the bottom up. I think now, more than ever, people are willing to put something on the line to make sure that they defend their rights. So I think that really gives me hope.
Nikole Yanez is a computer scientist by training, and a human rights defender from Honduras. She is passionate about feminism, the impact of the internet and protecting activists. She was first drawn to human rights through her work as a reporter with a local community radio station. After surviving the coup d’état in Honduras in 2009, Nikole broadened her approach to focus her activism on technology. When she applied for the Digital Forensics Fellowship with the Amnesty Tech Security Lab in 2022, she was looking to learn more about cybersecurity and apply what she learnt with the organizations and collectives she works with regularly.
She highlighted her commitment to fostering a network of tech-savvy communities across Latin America in an interview with Elina Castillo, Amnesty Tech’s Advocacy and Policy Advisor:
I grew up in Honduras, where I lived through the coup d’état, which took place in 2009. It was a difficult time where rights were non-existent, and people were constantly afraid. I thought it was something you only read about in history books, but it was happening in front of my eyes. I felt myself just trying to survive, but as time went by it made me stronger and want to fight for justice. Despite the difficulties, people in my community remained hopeful and we created a community radio station, which broadcast stories about everyday people and their lives with the aim of informing people about their human rights. I was a reporter, developing stories about individual people and their fight for their rights. From there, I found a passion for working with technology and it inspired me to train to become a computer scientist.
I am always looking for ways to connect technology with activism, and specifically to support women and Indigenous people in their struggles. As much as technology presents risks for human rights defenders, it also offers opportunities for us to better protect ourselves and strengthen our movements. Technology can bring more visibility to our movements, and it can empower our work by allowing us to connect with other people and learn new strategies.
Is there one moment where you realized how to connect what you’ve been doing with feminism with technology?
In my work, my perspective as a feminist helps me centre the experiences and needs of marginalised people for trainings and outreach. It is important for me to publicly identify as an Afrofeminist in a society where there is impunity for gendered and racist violence that occurs every day. In Honduras we need to put our energy into supporting these communities whose rights are most violated, and whose stories are invisible.
For example, in 2006, I was working with a Union to install the Ubuntu operating system (an open-source operating system) on their computers. We realized that the unionists didn’t know how to use a computer, so we created a space for digital literacy and learning about how to use a computer at the same time. This became not just a teaching exercise, but an exercise for me to figure out how to connect these tools to what people are interested in. Something clicked for me in this moment, and this experience helped solidify my approach to working on technology and human rights.
There are not many women working in technology and human rights. I don’t want to be one of the only women, so my goal is to see more women colleagues working on technical issues. I want to make it possible for women to work in this field. I also want to motivate more women to create change within the intersection of technology and human rights. Using a feminist perspective and approach, we ask big questions about how we are doing the work, what our approach needs to be, and who we need to work with. Nikole Yanez Honduras Human Rights Defender
For me, building a feminist internet means building an internet for everyone. This means creating a space where we do not reproduce sexist violence, where we find a community that responds to the people, to the groups, and to the organizations that fight for human rights. This includes involving women and marginalised people in building the infrastructure, in the configuration of servers, and in the development of protocols for how we use all these tools.
In Honduras, there aren’t many people trained in digital forensics analysis, yet there are organizations that are always seeking me out to help check their phones. The fellowship helped me learn about forensic analysis on phones and computers and tied the learning to what I’m actually doing in my area with different organizations and women’s rights defenders. The fellowship was practical and rooted in the experience of civil society organizations.
How do you explain the importance of digital forensics? Well first, it’s incredibly relevant for women rights defenders. Everyone wants to know if their phone has been hacked. That’s the first thing they ask:, “Can you actually know whether your phone has been hacked?” and “How do I know? Can you do it for me? How?” Those are the things that come up in my trainings and conversations.
I like to help people to think about protection as a process, something ongoing, because we use technology all day long. There are organizations and people that take years to understand that. So, it’s not something that can be achieved in a single conversation. Sometimes a lot of things need to happen, including bad things, before people really take this topic seriously…
I try to use very basic tools when I’m doing digital security support, to say you can do this on whatever device you’re on, this is a prevention tool. It’s not just applying technical knowledge, it’s also a process of explaining, training, showing how this work is not just for hackers or people who know a lot about computers.
One of the challenges is to spread awareness about cybersecurity among Indigenous and grassroots organizations, which aren’t hyper-connected and don’t think that digital forensics work is relevant to them. Sometimes what we do is completely disconnected from their lives, and they ask us: “But what are you doing?” So, our job is to understand their questions and where they are coming from and ground our knowledge-sharing in what people are actually doing.
To someone reading this piece and saying, oh, this kind of resonates with me, where do I start, what would your recommendation be?
If you are a human rights defender, I would recommend that you share your knowledge with your collective. You can teach them the importance of knowing about them, practicing them, as well as encouraging training to prevent digital attacks, because, in the end, forensic analysis is a reaction to something that has happened.
We can take a lot of preventive measures to ensure the smallest possible impact. That’s the best way to start. And it’s crucial to stay informed, to keep reading, to stay up to date with the news and build community.
If there are girls or gender non-conforming people reading this who are interested in technical issues, it doesn’t matter if you don’t have a degree or a formal education, as long as you like it. Most hackers I’ve met become hackers because they dive into a subject, they like it and they’re passionate about it.Nikole Yanez Honduras Human Rights Defender.
In the three decades since I became a lawyer, human rights – once understood as an uncomplicated good, a tool for securing dignity for the vulnerable against abuses by the powerful – have increasingly come under assault. Perhaps never more so than in the current moment: we are constantly talking about human rights, but often in a highly sceptical way. When Liz Truss loudly proclaims “We’ve got to leave the ECHR, abolish the supreme court and abolish the Human Rights Act,” she’s not the fringe voice she might have been in the 1990s. She represents a dangerous current of opinion, as prevalent on parts of the radical left as on the populist right of politics. It seems to be gaining momentum.
As an idealistic youngster, I would have been shocked to know that in 2024 it would be necessary to return to the back-to-basics case, to justify the need for fundamental rights and freedoms. But in a world where facts are made fluid, what were once thought of as core values have become hard to distil and defend. In an atmosphere of intense polarisation, human rights are trashed along all parts of the political spectrum – either as a framework to protect markets, or as a form of undercover socialism. What stands out for me is that the most trenchant critics share a profound nationalism. Nationalists believe that universal human rights – the clue’s in the name – undermine the ability of states to agitate for their narrower interests.
Given that so many of our problems can only be tackled with an international approach, a robust rights framework is more important than ever
It’s no coincidence that the governments keenest on turning inwards – Viktor Orbán’s in Hungary, that of former president Bolsonaro in Brazil – have been least keen on common standards that protect minorities in their own territories and hold them to high standards in the international arena. At a time of insecurity, these leaders leverage fear to maximise their appeal. The prospect of a second Trump administration in the US demonstrates that this trend shows no sign of abating. In that context, it’s vital to make the case for human rights anew.
It boils down to this: given that so many of our problems – in an age of climate change, global disorder and artificial intelligence – can only be tackled with an international approach, a robust rights framework is more important than ever. There are parallels with the postwar period in which human rights were most fully articulated, a time when it was obvious to everybody that cooperation and global standards were the best way to shore up our common humanity after a period of catastrophic conflict and genocide.
Of course everyone believes in some rights – normally their own and those of friends, family and people they identify with. It is “other people’s” freedoms that are more problematic. The greater the divisions between us, the greater this controversy. And yet, it is precisely these extreme disparities in health, wealth, power and opinion that make rights, rather than temporary privileges given and taken away by governments, so essential. They provide a framework for negotiating disputes and providing redress for abuses without recourse to violence.
New technologies, and AI in particular, require more not less international regulation. As people spend more time online, they become vulnerable to degrading treatment, unfairness and discrimination, breaches of privacy, censorship and other threats. The so-called “black boxes” behind the technology we use make ever more crucial decisions about our daily lives, from banking to education, employment, policing and border control. Anyone who flirts with the notion of computer infallibility should never forget the postmasters and other such abuses, perpetrated and then concealed.
Our shrinking, burning planet is the ultimate reason why nationalism does not work in the interests of humankind
Perhaps most important of all is the growing contribution of human rights litigation to the struggle against climate catastrophe. A whole generation of lawyers and environmentalists is taking notes from earlier struggles, just as suffragists once learned from slavery abolitionists. This is despite the machinations of fossil fuel corporations versed in a thousand lobbying, jurisdictional and other delaying tactics.
Our shrinking, burning planet is the ultimate reason why nationalism does not work in the interests of humankind. Today’s global empires, sailing under logos rather than flags, need to be more directly accountable under human rights treaties. Our existing mechanisms, whether local and national governments, domestic and international courts, or some of the more notoriously tortuous UN institutions, may be imperfect and in need of reform. Yet, like all structures of civilisation, they are easier to casually denigrate than to invest in and adapt to be more effective.
While I have been writing this, I have been voting in the House of Lords on amendments to the so-called safety of Rwanda bill. It is the most regressive anti-human rights measure of recent times, and intended to be that way. It will not stop the boats of desperate people fleeing persecution, but is designed to stop the courts. British judges will be prevented from ensuring refugees’ fair treatment before they are rendered human freight and transported to a place about whose “safety” our supreme court was not satisfied. Rishi Sunak will be able to use this situation as excuse for an election pledge to repudiate the European convention on human rights.
If he gets his way, rights will be removed not just from those arriving by boat, but from every man, woman and child in the UK. By contrast, the golden thread of human rights is equal treatment: protecting others as we would wish to be protected ourselves, if that unhappy day ever came. It’s a thread we must never let go of.
On 4 April 2024 the Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA) announced the call for applications for the 2024 ASEAN Human Rights Advocacy Academy. The Academy is a capacity building platform for youth activists in Southeast Asia to gauge a strong understanding and skills to engage with the ASEAN Human Rights mechanism.
Since 2005, FORUM-ASIA has been actively engaged in the development and strengthening of the ASEAN human rights mechanisms. Against the backdrop of a global shrinking civic-space due to the rise of authoritarianism and a lack of capacities for civil society to meaningfully engage and influence law and policy making spaces, the Academy aims to bolster regional civil society participation and capacity to influence the regional human rights mechanisms to strengthen its human rights protection and promotion mandate.
The Academy will be held in-person for a total of five days (including travel days) in one of the Southeast Asian countries. It will consist of a series of knowledge sharing sessions and skills development workshops and field visits to engage with relevant stakeholders.
Programme:
The Academy, which will take place in the last week of May 2024 in one of the Southeast Asia countries (details will be shared upon announcement of successful application). Participants will be engaged in knowledge sharing and interactive group work involving the ASEAN and UN human rights mechanisms. They will meet with AICHR representatives, diplomatic missions, experts, and relevant regional stakeholders and gain first-hand insights into the workings of ASEAN and its human rights mechanisms.
Eligibility Criteria:
Youths of Southeast Asian nationality within the age of 18-35 who are in their early and mid-level stages of work or activism in human rights, peace and democracy. Those based in Southeast Asia will be prioritized.
All Southeast Asian individuals are eligible to apply regardless of race, ethnicity, color, SOGIESC, religion, disability, etc.
Application from FORUM-ASIA’s Southeast Asia member organizations will be welcomed
Prior knowledge or experience in engaging with regional or international human rights mechanisms is a plus. Those without prior knowledge or experience are also welcome to apply.
Interested applicants must complete this application form by midnight of 18 April 2024 (BKK time). Late applications will not be considered.
On 22 February 2024, Human Rights Watch came with a study on governments reaching outside their borders to silence or deter dissent by committing human rights abuses against their own nationals or former nationals. Governments have targeted human rights defenders, journalists, civil society activists, and political opponents, among others, deemed to be a security threat. Many are asylum seekers or recognized refugees in their place of exile. These governmental actions beyond borders leave individuals unable to find genuine safety for themselves and their families. This is transnational repression.
Transnational repression looks different depending on the context. Recent cases include a Rwandan refugee who was killed in Uganda following threats from the Rwandan government; a Cambodian refugee in Thailand only to be extradited to Cambodia and summarily detained; and a Belarusian activist who was abducted while aboard a commercial airline flight. Transnational repression may mean that a person’s family members who remain at home become targets of collective punishment, such as the Tajik activist whose family in Tajikistan, including his 10-year-old daughter, was detained, interrogated, and threatened.
Transnational repression is not new, but it is a phenomenon that has often been downplayed or ignored and warrants a call to action from a global, rights-centered perspective. Human Rights Watch’s general reporting includes over 100 cases of transnational repression. This report includes more than 75 of these cases from the past 15 years, committed by over two dozen governments across four regions. While the term “transnational repression” has at times become shorthand for naming authoritarian governments as perpetrators of rights violations, democratic administrations have assisted in cases of transnational repression.
Methods of transnational repression include killings, unlawful removals (expulsions, extraditions, and deportations), abductions and enforced disappearances, targeting of relatives, abuse of consular services, and so-called digital transnational repression, which includes the use of technology to surveil or harass people. These tactics often facilitate further human rights violations, such as torture and ill-treatment.
This report also highlights cases of governments misusing the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol)—an intergovernmental organization with 195 member countries—to target critics abroad.
Victims of transnational repression have included government critics, actual or perceived dissidents, human rights defenders, civil society activists, journalists, and opposition party members and others. Governments have targeted individuals because of their identity, such as ethnicity, religion, or gender. Back home, families and friends of targeted people may also become victims, as governments detain, harass, or harm them as retribution or collective punishment. Transnational repression can have far-reaching consequences, including a chilling effect on the rights to freedom of expression, association, and assembly among those who have been targeted or fear they could be next.
This report is not an exhaustive examination of cases of transnational repression. Instead, it outlines cases that Human Rights Watch has documented in the course of researching global human rights issues that point to key methods and trends of transnational repression.
Human Rights Watch hopes that by drawing attention to cases of transnational repression, international organizations and concerned governments will pursue actions to provide greater safety and security for those at risk. Governments responsible for transnational repression should be on notice that their efforts to silence critics, threaten human rights defenders, and target people based on their identity are no less problematic abroad than they are at home. This report provides governments seeking to tackle transnational repression with concrete recommendations, while raising caution against laws and policies that could restrict other human rights.
Human Rights Watch calls on governments committing transnational repression to respect international human rights standards both within and beyond their territory. Governments combatting transnational repression should recognize such abuses as a threat to human rights generally and act to protect those at risk within their jurisdiction or control.
“Effectively realising human rights for everyone, everywhere is the pathway to free, fair and just communities and a more peaceful and sustainable world“, write ISHR Director Phil Lynch and Board Chair Vrinda Grover on 8 March 2024. Here some excerpts from a piece worth reading:
We face a global climate emergency. We witness atrocity crimes being perpetrated with apparent impunity, from Afghanistan to Sudan, Palestine to Ukraine, and Nicaragua to Xinjiang. We confront rising populism and propaganda, with artificial intelligence misused to fuel disinformation and discrimination, and democracy facing a ‘make-or-break year’ in 2024, with over 70 national elections. Each of these crises and conflicts are complex, yet they are also interconnected in four fundamental ways.
First, repression and rights violations are among the root causes of all these crises and conflicts…
Second, respect for human rights, and accountability for violations, is essential to address and resolve these crises and conflicts. ..
Third, very few States, if any, have been prepared to treat human rights as paramount and apply human rights standards in a principled, consistent way to each crisis and conflict. ..The selective and inconsistent application of international human rights law undermines the integrity of the framework, as well as the credibility, legitimacy and influence of States and other actors who engage in such double standards.
Fourth and finally, the work of human rights defenders at the national level, as well as their engagement and advocacy at the international level, is essential to address and resolve each of these conflicts and crises. Defenders prevent rights violations, document abuses, promote accountability, and propose solutions that are grounded in community priorities and needs. Indigenous rights defenders carry the knowledge that is necessary to live sustainably and to respect and protect the environment. Digital rights activists are pushing for rights-based regulation of artificial intelligence to ensure that humanity benefits from its innovations and efficiencies. Whistleblowers are exposing government wrongdoing and corporate misfeasance, working to safeguard democracy, while corporate accountability activists are campaigning for an international treaty on business and human rights. Women human rights defenders from Afghanistan are leading the campaign to hold the Taliban accountable for the crime of gender apartheid, while also ensuring that humanitarian aid reaches the most vulnerable populations. In Sudan, women defenders are leading peace movements and protests at the local level, as well as international advocacy, which was instrumental in the establishment of a UN investigative mechanism, further adding to the pressure on the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces to end the war. Despite the challenges, complexities and uncertainties we collectively face, we remain convinced that, with international human rights laws and standards providing a compass, human rights defenders can chart a course to a more peaceful, just and inclusive world….
Despite the challenging times, exacerbated by declining funding for international human rights advocacy and organisations by some States and foundations, ISHR continues to pursue a positive and forward-looking agenda.
We’re pleased that in 2023 the Democratic Republic of Congo enacted a specific national law on the protection of defenders, the culmination of years of work by ISHR and national partners. With this development, the DRC joins the ranks of countries like Côte d’Ivoire, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Mongolia amongst the countries where we have worked alongside national partners to strengthen legal frameworks for defenders and establish specific defender protection laws and will continue to work to ensure effective implementation.
In the area of women’s rights, we are working with defenders from Afghanistan and Iran, together with international legal experts, to push for the explicit recognition and codification of the atrocity crime of gender apartheid. This would fill an international protection gap for women and girls, as well as impose responsibilities on third States and non-State actors to take concrete steps to prevent and end gender apartheid.
With 2023 marking the 25th anniversary of the Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, we are coordinating a broad coalition to develop an authoritative baseline document of international and regional jurisprudence in relation to the protection of defenders, which will be launched in 2024.
And throughout 2024 we’ll continue allying with Black-led organisations to promote racial justice, with feminist and LGBTIQ+ organisations to resist anti-rights narratives and movements, with corporate accountability activists to strengthen laws on business and human rights, and with Global South defenders to ensure that key multilateral fora are relevant, accessible and responsive to them.
Reflecting on our collective wins over 2023, we identified one golden thread: human rights defenders working in dynamic coalitions, movements and networks to strategically leverage international law and mechanisms to contribute to positive change. With 2023 marking both the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 25th anniversary of the Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, and 2024 marking ISHR’s own 40th anniversary, it is apt to recall that the work of defenders and the integrity of the international framework are essential to the realisation of human rights on the ground.
The promise of the Universal Declaration will only be fulfilled when we work in coalition to ensure that defenders are protected and that standards are consistently respected and applied.
DefendDefenders in January 2024 has chosen as HRDs of the MonthPamela Angwech from Uganda.
For most of her life, Pamela Angwech’s existence has always been a defiant and simultaneous act of survival and resistance. In 1976 when she was born, the anti-Amin movement was gathering pace, and her family was one of the earliest victims in Northern Uganda. Her father, a passionate educationist in Kitgum district was one of the most vocal critics of the dictatorship’s human rights excesses, which made him an obvious target of the state’s marauding vigilantes. Fearing for his life and that of his young family, he escaped North, to Sudan, leaving behind his wife, then pregnant with Pamela, to follow him as soon as she could. It was on the treacherous journey to rejoin her father that Pamela was born, somewhere between Uganda and Sudan, and named Angwench, an Acholi word to mean “on the run,” in keeping with the circumstances of her birth.
Unfortunately, those precarious circumstances would continue to define most of Angwech’s childhood. Although Amin was eventually overthrown, paving way for her family’s return home, the immediate post-Amin years were equally tumultuous, and when President Museveni’s National Resistance Army took power in 1986, Northern Uganda was immediately engulfed in a civil war by the Lord’s Resistance Army(LRA) rebels that would rage on for the next 20 years, bringing wanton anguish and suffering to the region’s people and communities.
Angwench navigated those precarious circumstances to pursue an education, convinced that only then could she impact her community for the better. At University, she studied Gender and Women Studies and immediately returned home to seek work with the UN’s World Food Program Office in Gulu, determined to join the relief effort to alleviate the suffering of her people in Internally Displaced People’s (IDP)Camps.
Initially, they told me there was no job. But I was determined to work with the UN and nowhere else. So, I camped at their office for 14 straight days. Sometimes, I would volunteer as a gatekeeper when the substantive gatekeeper was away, and other times, I would sit at the front patch of the Office Head the whole day. When they realized I was determined not to leave, they allowed me to start officially volunteering with them. “I would go with them to distribute food in the IDP camps, until later, I was formally integrated as official staff.
Yet, despite her dogged stubbornness and resilience, she was not prepared for the heart-rending experience of life in the IDPs, particularly the plight of women and girls.
“I started to notice that after picking their food rations, women and children would start picking residue beans from the floor, to take for either their little children or their elderly parents who could not queue. One other time, I noticed a visibly tired woman carrying a baby on her back, being pushed out of the queue by others. I called her to the front and assured her that I would give her a special ration but asked her to first untie her baby from the back, so she could protect her from the sun and breastfeed her. When she untied her baby, I noticed that the baby’s neck was twisted – it had suffocated and died! That changed me, forever,”
From Humanitarian to Human Rights Activist
Angwech realized that like a balm, humanitarian work could only soothe the suffering of her people but fell short of tackling the root causes of the same suffering. “So I decided that someone had to speak up about the heartbreaking indignity and human rights violations surrounding the conflict in Northern Uganda. I turned full scale, from a humanitarian to a human rights activist, particularly championing the rights of women who were most vulnerable “she says.
Angwech would move on the streets rallying women to stand up for their rights, holding placards signaling injustices against women in IDP camps like molestation and rape. Overtime, she won followers: Emboldened by her courage and audacity, other women started to show up and speak up against the conflict and related violence. Angwech mobilized grassroot women groups to pursue LRA leader Joseph Kony in Congo’s Garamba forest, to dramatize their cries for peace, under UN resolution 13/25 which provides for women’s participation in peace processes.
In 2004, Angwech started Gulu Women’s Economic Development & Globalization (GWED-G) to rehabilitate victims of the war, from victims of conflict-related sexual and gender-based violence to those physically harmed by the conflict. Since then, Angwech says GWED-G has rehabilitated over 1700 war victims through physical rehabilitation projects, giving them prosthesis, among other forms of support. It has also continued to sensitise and organise grassroot women into human rights defenders’ groups, through which they can report and address GBV cases, issues of women economic rights among others. Today, Angwech says there are about 600 of these groups across Gulu, Lamwo, Amuru and Kitgum, each with a membership of 30 -40 members.
Today, GWED-G is arguably the largest grassroots human rights organisation in Northern Uganda. It has also expanded to cover other social and economic causes, including environmental protection advocacy. Angwech says the environment is the local communities’ last refugee, and yet deforestation and charcoal burning are threatening it. “For post-conflict communities like us in Northern Uganda, land is our primary resource. It is the land from which people make an income to feed their families, send their children to school, and access medical care. War destroyed everything else. So, if we don’t protect the environment, our land will be degraded, rainy seasons will begin to change which will affect food production and bring back hunger,” she says.
Lorenzo Tondo in Palermo reported in the Guardian of 22 February 2024 that people and groups who assist asylum seekers are reporting a disturbing trend of escalating intimidation, with aid workers facing direct threats including being held at gunpoint and having their phone communications monitored by government authorities, according to a report from the Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights.
“Organisations and people assisting refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants have been subjected to beatings, had their vehicles or equipment destroyed, or have been targeted by vandalism of their property, and even by arson or bomb attacks,” she wrote.
Mijatović said she had observed in certain member states how authorities had engaged with human rights defenders in an aggressive or intimidating manner. During the humanitarian crisis at the Poland-Belarus border, thousands of refugees from the Middle East were offered a route by the Lukashenko regime to try to reach the EU from Belarus, highlighting the restrictions by Poland on access to the border zone for people and organisations providing humanitarian assistance and legal aid.
The commissioner noted how “the emergence of an approach in which migration issues are increasingly addressed by member states from a security perspective” had led to the building of fences and deployment of military personnel, equipment and surveillance in border areas that has also affected NGOs.
“These physical obstacles deny asylum seekers the chance to seek protection and the right to a fair and efficient asylum procedure [and] this approach has also created an extremely difficult environment for human rights defenders,” she wrote.
“Those who assist refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants may be seen by states as an obstacle to the implementation of asylum and migration policies focused on deterrence and security, and therefore are faced with hostility. The rolling back of human rights, which is often part of states’ policies in this area, also leads to measures explicitly or implicitly targeting those helping.”
NGO rescue boats have also faced violence, including the use of firearms, from non-European countries with which Council of Europe member states cooperate on external migration control. NGO workers on some of these vessels have documented how often the Libyan coastguard has fired gunshots and endangered crew members and people in distress in the central Mediterranean. [see e.g. https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2019/12/18/international-migrants-day-the-story-of-the-ocean-viking/]
Mijatović also noted the growing use of surveillance technologies. “During discussions for the preparation of this document concerns were raised that, in some member states, pervasive surveillance activities created mounting challenges for human rights defenders, including lawyers and journalists,” she wrote.
“Governments, in the name of national security concerns, often employ advanced surveillance tools to intercept communications and monitor online activities, including human rights defenders’ social media.”
In 2022, the Greek journalists Thanasis Koukakis and Stavros Malichudis were allegedly targeted for investigating sensitive topics such as financial crime cases and migration. The Italian justice minister in 2021 dispatched inspectors to Sicily after revelations that prosecutors had intercepted hundreds of telephone conversations involving no fewer than 15 journalists and covering migration issues and aid workers in the central Mediterranean.
Mijatović wrote: “Invasive surveillance practices, whether through physical surveillance, phone and internet tapping or by using spyware not only infringes on the personal security and privacy of individual human rights defenders, but also threaten the confidentiality between human rights defenders and the refugees, asylum seekers and migrants they assist, which is often crucial to working effectively.”
She added that people helping refugees, asylum seekers and migrants often experience extremely high levels of online hate and even death threats. Human rights defenders who are themselves refugees or from an ethnic minority background may also receive racist abuse, online and offline.
On 3 March 2024 Gary Price from the University of Minnesota Libraries reports that the University of Minnesota now has one of the largest human rights archives at a public university, and it’s already helping researchers, educators, and human rights advocates across the globe.
“With everything that’s happening in the world, if we can highlight aspects of the history of human rights, maybe that provides us an opportunity to learn what not to do in the future,” said Kris Kiesling, director of the U of M’s Archives and Special Collections (ASC).
Unlike other collections in ASC, the Minnesota Human Rights Archive (MHRA) is an umbrella archive composed of new human rights materials donated to the Libraries, as well as existing materials housed in other collections.
From the Givens Collection of African American Literature to the Immigration History Research Center Archives, there’s a trove of materials about civil rights, LGBTQ rights, child labor, domestic violence, public health, and more. ASC archivists and curators are already investigating how their materials relate to human rights, and how their collections are positioned under the MHRA umbrella.
Planning for MHRA began around eight years ago when Barbara Frey — the former director of the U of M Human Rights Program and a founder and previous director of the advocates for human rights — began contacting The Advocates, CVT, and other organizations across the state.
Kiesling — alongside University Archivist Erik Moore and Social Welfare History Archivist Linnea Anderson — met with Frey, Weissbrodt, and Meyer Weinshel, former collections and outreach lead for UMN’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, to build the MHRA.
The team transferred some materials from HRC in 2016, and later on, Patrick Finnegan, former assistant director of HRC and administrative associate for The Advocates, surveyed and listed Weissbrodt’s personal papers and research materials.
Pooling new and existing materials under the human rights umbrella not only helps researchers by condensing the initial hunt-and-gather phase of their projects, but it also helps potential donors. It’s easier for them to articulate their goals for their material, Moore explained, and it’s easier to connect their work to the broad framework of human rights, than a more granular collection like the University Archives.
Thematic areas of interest… Acts of intimidation and reprisals ISHR remains deeply concerned about reprisals against civil society actors who engage or seek to engage with UN bodies and mechanisms. We call for all States and the Council to do more to address the situation. HRC55 is a key opportunity for States to raise concerns about specific cases of reprisals and demand that governments provide an update on any investigation or action taken toward accountability. An increasing number of States have raised concerns in recent sessions about individual cases of reprisals, including at HRC39, HRC41, HRC42, HRC43, HRC45, HRC51, HRC52, and HRC53, and HRC54. States raising cases is an important aspect of seeking accountability and ending impunity for acts of reprisal and intimidation against defenders engaging with the UN. It can also send a powerful message of solidarity to defenders, supporting and sustaining their work in repressive environments. We urge States to continue to raise the cases ISHR has campaigned on in the last two years in their statements. We also urge States to raise and follow up on individual cases of reprisals in the country specific debates taking place at this session. Further information on these cases can be found here or by contacting the ISHR team at s.hosseiny@ishr.ch
Other thematic debates
At this 55th session, the Council will discuss a range of economic, social and cultural rights through dedicated debates with Special Rapporteurs.
Country-specific developments
Attacks against fundamental freedoms in relation to Palestine in Western Europe and North America (including Austria, France, Germany, Italy, United States, United Kingdom): Civil society and international experts have raised grave concern at the attacks on fundamental freedoms when advocating for the rights of Palestinians by authorities in Western Countries. The attacks on freedoms of expression, assembly and association being monitored since October 2023 are by no means a new trend. For example, in September 2023, Amnesty International issued a statement addressing ‘restrictions of freedom of expression and freedom of assembly through blanket, pre-emptive bans imposed on assemblies on the occasion of Nakba Remembrance Day in Berlin’ by the Berlin Assembly Authority. However there has been a notable escalation in the intensity of these attacks as well as the political and legal measures put forward to further curtail fundamental freedoms in relation to Palestine since October 2023. Western governments, who regularly call for strong protection of human rights and civic space, are emboldening Israel’s indiscriminate attacks by cracking down on free expression and peaceful assembly, online and offline. Authorities have resorted to banning the holding of demonstrations, cracked down on demonstrators, and arrested protesters. Moreover, individuals have been fired from their jobs for voicing opinions on social media. Individuals have also reported facing hate speech, censorship and self-censoring fearing reprisals, including discrimination and criminalisation for voicing their opinions online and offline. Special Procedures have concluded that the undue restrictions imposed by States, especially Western States, ‘on peaceful protests and civil society working to protect human rights and humanitarian law in the context of the Gaza war are contrary to States’ obligation under international law to prevent atrocity crimes, such as genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and apartheid’. They stressed ‘that inclusive and meaningful collaboration with civil society, human rights defenders, […] and protest movements is vital to end the cycle of violence and impunity […], dismantling apartheid and ensuring justice and accountability […]’. Special Procedures have also addressed how ‘risks of potential anti-Semitism have also been used as a justification by some States to ban and criminalise peaceful assemblies and expressions in support of Palestinians’ rights’. Civil society has for years deplored the misuse by Israel and Western States of this argument to suppress Palestinian rights advocacy through the IHRA working definition of antisemitism. The Arab Center Washington DC stressed that ‘conflation between antisemitism and legitimate criticism of Israeli crimes against Palestinian civilians (heightened by the adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism by many States and organisations), leads to the silencing of Palestinian voices’. The normalisation of anti-Palestinian racism, rarely treated as equal human beings by the media or politicians, has also led to the dehumanisation of Palestinians as emphasised by the Special Procedures who stressed that ‘States have sought to justify these restrictions by referring to risks related to incitement to hatred and ‘glorification’ or ‘support of terrorism’, and potential risks to national security or public order. This approach is not only arbitrary, but it also dehumanises Palestinians by unjustly linking them as a whole to criminal endeavours and terrorism.’ Moreover, Special Procedures have stressed that ’employees in the public and private sectors should also not face reprisals, such as disciplinary measures or loss of employment, for speaking out’. They emphasised the importance for States and relevant academic institutions to respect academic freedoms, and ensure that students and teaching staff can freely associate, assemble and express their views with regards to the war in Gaza and the Israeli occupation of Palestine. The European Legal Support Center (ELSC) has monitored 661 incidents of repression against the Palestinian solidarity movement or individuals advocating for Palestinian rights since 7 October : 219 took place in Germany, 172 in the UK, 72 in France, 45 in Italy, 16 in Austria and 137 in other European countries. These include legal action or threats of legal action; restriction of movement, harassment, intimidation or violence; smear campaigns; threats to citizenship of residency status; disciplinary investigation, loss of employment or suspension from position; threats to academic freedom; refusal or withdrawal of use of venue or cancelation of events; defunding or financial de-risking. Since 2014, Palestine Legal has responded to over 2200 incidents in the US of suppression of Palestinian rights advocacy aimed at intimidating Palestinians and their supporters into silence and inaction. Since October 7, Palestine Legal responded to over 1258 reports of suppression of Palestinian rights advocacy in the US. Palestine Legal and over 600 legal organisations and professionals based in the USA urged in a joint letter elected officials and institutional leaders ‘to take urgent measures to address the surging racist attacks and unlawful retaliation against advocates for Palestinian right They address ‘an unprecedented barrage of extreme attacks that Palestinians and their allies in the U.S. are facing, including violent assaults, hate speech, employment discrimination, severe harassment and doxxing of students, law enforcement visits, and censorship in different arenas of civic and social life’. The organisation stressed that ‘hundreds of incidents happening across the country signal a much broader effort to criminalise dissent, justify censorship, and incite anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and anti-Muslim harassment, doxing and vigilantism against Palestinians and their allies. This is not a new phenomenon, but it is escalating at terrifying speed.’ In line with Special Procedures recommendations, we urge States, in particular Western States to: immediately and unconditionally release all arbitrarily detained individuals ‘for the exercise of their rights to freedom of peaceful assembly, of association and of freedom of expression in the context in Israel/occupied Palestinian territory’. Put an end to the intimidation and criminalisation of ‘civil society and activists advocating for respect of Palestinians’ rights, including the right to self-determination, for boycotts, divestment and sanctions, international criminal accountability, and an end to the alleged crimes of apartheid and genocide against Palestinians’ Ensure that ‘legislation and policy measures designed to counter anti-Semitism or terrorism are not used to suppress fundamental freedoms or to restrict civil society’s access to resources and/or criminalize them for their legitimate work.’ Ensure that ‘civil society organizations, human rights defenders and academics, working on Palestinian rights can exercise the ability to seek, receive and use financial resources, including foreign funding; and that counter-terrorism laws, including financing laws, are not applied in a manner contrary to international standards.’
Algeria
The sustained repression against the pro-democracy movement and human rights defenders in Algeria was addressed in the end of session statements of the Special Rapporteur on freedom of association and assembly as well as the Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders who conducted official visits to Algeria in 2023. These were the first visits since 2016 by UN mandate holders to the country. The Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Assembly and Association addressed the ‘criminalisation of civil society work’, and the ‘suspension or dissolution of political parties and associations, including prominent human rights advocacy organisations’ (including RAJ and LADDH), as well as ‘overly restrictive laws and regulations’ hindering their work. The rapporteurs called for the amendment of laws used to curtail fundamental freedoms, including article 87 bis of the Penal Code, used to outlaw movements such as the Movement for the Autonomy of Kabylie (MAK) and the Islamic political movement Rachad, both declared terrorist entities, and to bring criminal charges against individuals for exercising their rights to expression and assembly. Following her visit and attending the trial of three Algerian human rights defenders who faced terrorism charges, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders ‘welcomed the acquittal of Jamila Loukil, Kaddour Chouicha and Said Boudour’. While this is a positive development, a big number of activists and HRDs remain arbitrarily detained in Algeria. The SR on HRDs addressed the arbitrary detention of Kamira Nait Sid, a WHRD and co-president of the World Amazigh Congress sentenced to three years in prison where she visited her. She was arrested and tried on charges of ‘undermining national unity” and “belonging to a terrorist organisation’. The Special Rapporteur also met with HRD Ahmed Manseri, was put in pre-trial detention following meeting the Special Rapporteur on FoAA, ‘a picture of him meeting the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Association and Assembly was included in his case file’. In line with the decision of the WGAD, Algeria should release arbitrarily detained HRD Mohamed BabaNadjar, detained since 2005 and serving a life sentence for his work on the rights of the Amazigh people. ISHR is alarmed at the level of self-censorship and risk of reprisals individuals face for engaging with the UN and its mechanisms. The SR on HRDs reported that individuals were self-censoring ‘for fear of being charged under Article 87 bis’. The SR on FoAA reported that activists told him that they were not willing to meet him ‘in person as they feared they could be subject to reprisals by authorities for undermining national security.’ The SR on HRDs also reported that some HRDs she intended to meet “refused or cancelled at the last minute, for fear of reprisals”. We urge all States to demand that Algeria, an HRC member, end its crackdown on human rights defenders and civil society organisations as well as put an end to all acts of intimidation and reprisals. We also call on States to call for the immediate release of all individuals arbitrarily detained, including woman human rights defender Kamira Nait Sid, and Mohamed BabaNadjar, and to urge Algeria to amend all legislation that hinders the work of civil society, including article 87 bis, regulations on funding, and other undue limitations to freedom of assembly and association.
Bahrain
Bahrain continues to imprison human rights defenders, including Abduljalil Al-Singace, Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja and Naji Fateel, despite their prolonged incarceration deemed arbitrary by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. High profile opposition figures such as Sheikh Ali Salman, Hassan Mushaima, and Abdulwahab Hussain also remain behind bars.
On 19 September 2023, the UN Secretary-General published their annual report naming five individuals who faced reprisals for cooperating with United Nations mechanisms. The death penalty continues to be used, with 26 individuals on death row, many alleging torture and coerced confessions. Death row inmates Mohamed Ramadhan and Husain Moosa have been detained for a decade and are at risk of imminent execution despite UNWGAD calling for their immediate and unconditional release and impending execution. Last year, over 800 political prisoners in Jau Prison launched a hunger strike to protest harsh conditions, discrimination and ill-treatment.
We call on States to urge Bahraini authorities to unconditionally release all those sentenced for their political opinions, including human rights defenders, stop reprisals for cooperating with the UN, and implement recommendations by UN Special Procedures.
China
China’s fourth UPR review on January 23 exposed strong international condemnation over grave abuses, and calls for unfettered access to the whole country for UN Special Procedures experts, including from the Global South. Numerous recommendations and advanced questions referred to the overwhelming evidence of grave abuses documented by UN bodies since 2018, compiled in a repository published by ISHR. This vast array of UN recommendations constitute an impartial benchmark to assess the Chinese government’s willingness and actions to address systematic and widespread human rights violations. Follow-up to these welcome steps must be ensured. To uphold the integrity of its mandate and put an end to China’s exceptionalism, the HRC must establish a monitoring and reporting mechanism on the country, as repeatedly called for by over 40 UN experts and hundreds of human rights groups globally. States should further urge the UN High Commissioner to strengthen follow-up action on his Office’s Xinjiang report, including through public calls for implementation, translation of the report, and an assessment of its implementation. States should ensure sustained visibility at the HRC of China’s abuse of national security and other cross-cutting abuses affecting Uyghurs, Tibetans, Hong Kongers and mainland Chinese defenders, including the latest crackdown on human rights lawyers. Finally, States should ask for the prompt release of human rights defenders, including feminist activists Huang Xueqin and Li Qiaochu, human rights lawyers Chang Weiping, Ding Jiaxi, Yu Wensheng and his wife Xu Yan, legal scholar Xu Zhiyong, Uyghur doctor Gulshan Abbas, Hong Kong lawyer Chow Hang-tung, and Tibetan climate activist A-nya Sengdra.
Democratic Republic of the Congo
The government must engage civil society in the drafting of the implementation, ensure it is in line with international standards and doesn’t further restrict the rights of defenders in the country. The United Nations Joint Human Rights Office (UNJHRO) must support the calls of civil society and ensure the protection and promotion of defenders is part of its support to the government of the DRC.
The Council will consider oral updates with the High Commissioner and the team of international experts on the DRC on 3 April, followed by General Debate.
According to human rights organisations, at least 251 defendants were rotated to new cases in 2023, and another 620 defendants in 2022, demonstrating the continued involvement of the judicial authorities in violations of the right to fair trial and undermining the rule of law.
The Human Rights Committee also called on Egypt to ‘ensure that court proceedings in terrorism cases are fully in line with articles 14 and 15 of the Covenant to ensure fair trials and put an end to the use of mass trials that are inherently not aligned with international standards’. UN Special Procedures have raised their concerns with Egypt on the ‘Terrorism Circuit Courts and allegations of their incompatibility with international due process guarantees, as well as alleged violations of fundamental rights of many individuals, including human rights defenders, who have been tried, or are still waiting to be tried, before these courts’. According to the Egyptian Front for Human Rights’ annual report, the Terrorism Circuit Courts ordered the release of only 3 defendants, approximately 0.1% of the 35966 cases of detention renewals under its consideration in 2023. The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) has also documented this pattern of what is commonly referred to as ‘hearings of detention renewals’ by the Terrorism Circuit Courts, including most recently renewals of detention of almost 900 defendants on 21 and 22 January 2024. Since the Committee against Torture (CAT) reached ‘the inescapable conclusion‘ in 2017 that ‘torture is a systematic practice in Egypt,’ the Egyptian government has not taken any serious steps to address the issue. In a new report submitted to the CAT, REDRESS and a coalition of Egyptian and international civil society organisations – including the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms, Dignity, and the International Commission of Jurists – conclude that the widespread and systematic use of torture by the Egyptian authorities amounts to a crime against humanity under customary international law. ISHR reiterates the calls of more than 100 NGOs from around the world in urging the HRC to create a monitoring and reporting mechanism on the ever-deteriorating human rights situation in Egypt.
Guatemala
Guatemala is living historic and hugely challenging times. The undermining of Guatemala’s State institutions over many years has led to a collapse in the rule of law and a worsening human rights crisis. The judicial system has been largely stripped of its independence and attacks and threats against human rights defenders and justice operators have been rife. Currently at least 45 former justice operators have been forced into exile, with at least 10 facing criminal proceedings against them in the country. Guatemala’s new President, Bernardo Arévalo, has promised to re-establish the rule of law, fight against corruption and impunity and address poverty. At this session under General Debate 2, the Council will consider the High Commissioner’s report on OHCHR activities including in Guatemala. This is the opportunity for States to speak of their support for effective measures to address corruption, impunity and for the respect of human rights under the new Presidency, and to continue their commitment to monitoring government actions. States should call on Guatemala to use UPR and treaty body recommendations as a road map for the necessary reforms to reintroduce the rule of law, fight impunity and uphold human rights. States should call on Guatemala to commit to and accept visits of Special Procedures as a means to institute a regime of rights monitoring and recommendations. They should welcome the good news of the three year renewal of the mandate of the Office of the High Commissioner in Guatemala and suggest that the High Commissioner for Human Rights visit the country at his earliest convenience. States should urge the government to guarantee the security of indigenous communities and leaders and institute an ongoing dialogue with indigenous communities to hear and respond to their demands. In that regard, Guatemala should sign and ratify the Escazú Protocol as a matter of urgency. States should call on Guatemala to put the protection of defenders at the heart of the new government’s actions, including through the implementation of the public human rights defenders public protection policy, ordered by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in 2014.
Israel/OPT
The Council will hold an interactive dialogue with the High Commissioner on ensuring accountability and justice in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem on 29 February and an interactive dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on the oPt on 26 March. ISHR welcomes South Africa’s proceedings at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the situation in Gaza as an important step towards effective measures and accountability for atrocity crimes committed by Israel in the context of its decades long colonial apartheid imposed over the Palestinian people, including its latest war on Gaza. It also upheld international law in the face of decades of double standards during which the international community failed to take effective measures to ensure Israel complies with international law and the numerous UN resolutions and recommendations by UN special procedures, treaty bodies, and investigative mechanisms. Civil society organisations stressed that by ‘drawing on the nature of Israel’s military action, and ‘dehumanising’ statements by Israeli government officials, the Court found that Israel’s actions in Gaza are plausibly genocidal’, pending its final decision. These provisional measures which have a legally binding effect, ‘cannot be carried out without a full cessation of hostilities’, thus can only be effective with a ceasefire. In a joint statement from January 2024, Special Procedures deplored that they had raised the alarm of the risk of genocide several times and for months, ‘reminding all governments they have a duty to prevent genocide’ and stressing that ‘not only is Israel killing and causing irreparable harm against Palestinian civilians with its indiscriminate bombardments, it is also knowingly and intentionally imposing a high rate of disease, prolonged malnutrition, dehydration, and starvation by destroying civilian infrastructure’. The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination raised ‘serious concerns regarding the obligation of Israel and other State parties to prevent crimes against humanity and genocide.’ Responding to arguments of Israel and other States, the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel reiterated that article 51 which ‘provides for the use of force by a State in self-defense of the Charter […] is not applicable’. Special procedures expressed their profoundly concern about ‘the support of certain governments for Israel’s strategy of warfare against the besieged population of Gaza, and the failure of the international system to mobilise to prevent genocide’. ISHR and over 180 organisations, deplored the continued transfer of arms to Israel by States, including the US, the UK, Germany, Canada, Italy, the Netherlands, and stress that the provision of military equipment and military support to Israel with knowledge that they are likely to be used in serious violations of international law, including international crimes, invites charges of complicity. ISHR also denounces the defunding civil society organisations and UNRWA by Western States, a strategy implemented by Israel and discursively imposed by some States to silence the work of human rights defenders and ensure the demise of the Palestinian refugee issue and with it the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination. We call for an immediate and unconditional release of all Palestinians deprived of liberty without due process, and all Israeli hostages; and the lifting of the 17 year-old illegal blockade and closure of the Gaza Strip, which constitutes collective punishment. In line with the ICJ provisional measures, and based on the obligations of States under international law, including the Genocide Convention, we urge States to take immediate and effective measures to: Impose a ceasefire and ensure that Israel provides immediate and unhindered delivery of aid to the Gaza Strip; Implement a two-way arms embargo on Israel; Ensure that internally displaced Palestinians return to their areas of previous residence and are provided with safe shelters in accordance with IHL provisions; Support the work of the CoI to investigate the root causes of the situation on both sides of the Green Line, including through providing sufficient resources for the mechanism, to ensure accountability and redress; and Restore funding of UNRWA and civil society organisations working to ensure the delivery of humanitarian aid in the context of starvation and genocide as well as document human rights violations, respectively.
Mali
In Mali the human rights situation continues to deteriorate, with the government increasingly cracking down on media and opposition voices, significantly narrowing civic space. During the presentation of his last report at the 52nd session of the Human Rights Council, the Independent Expert highlighted the threats, physical assaults and attacks on their property defenders faced because of their opinions.
Additionally, he recognised that the progress recently made towards the return to constitutional order may not lead to credible, free, fair and inclusive electoral processes unless appropriate measures are taken to address the shrinking civic space in the country. Since the adoption of the defenders’ law in 2018, Mali is yet to fully guarantee the protection of the rights of defenders through its implementation. In 2020, Mali finally adopted its implementation decree for the HRD law shortly followed by the decision adopted by the Malian government which establishes the characteristics, procedures for granting and withdrawing the professional card of human rights defenders. ISHR continues to ask the independent expert what support he planned to give to the Malian government to ensure the full implementation of the defenders law and its protection mechanism. The HRC must keep the scrutiny on Mali to ensure that defenders in the country are protected in line with the UN Declaration and not restricted by the limitation imposed by a card defining the status of defenders. The Council will hold an interactive dialogue with the independent expert on 28 March. Nicaragua
The human rights situation in Nicaragua comes back on the agenda against this session with two planned debates. On 29 February the Group of Human Rights Experts will present its report followed by an interactive dialogue. On the 4 March there will be an oral update of the HC on the situation of human rights in Nicaragua followed by a general debate. At the Council’s last interactive dialogue on Nicaragua, on 18 December 2023, the UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights said of Nicaragua: ‘Every day the country deviates further from human rights.’ The last months have shown how true this remains. Upcoming regional elections on the Caribbean Coast (4 March) have provided a context for government crackdowns on opponents. The main indigenous and Afro-descendant political party in the country, YATAMA, has had its legal status revoked and two of its leaders, National Assembly legislator and YATAMA party chair Brooklyn Rivera and YATAMA legal representative Nancy Elizabeth Henríquez were arrested. The whereabouts of Brooklyn Rivera remain unknown. These arrests have been followed by increased militarisation in the territories on the Caribbean coast. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and its Special Rapporteurship for Freedom of Expression have expressed concern about these and other attacks against indigenous communities in the country. Many Nicaraguan human rights defenders remain in exile with no possibility of return. These include Rolando Álvarez, sentenced to 26 years in prison after strongly criticising government repression last year and expelled from the country in mid-January 2024 alongside 17 other clerics. Repression against defenders continues. States must call on Nicaragua to immediately release all arbitrarily detained people including Freddy Quezada, subject of precautionary measures by the IACHR; to provide immediate information about the whereabouts of all those disappeared, including poet Carlos Bojorge, detained and disappeared one month ago, and Brooklyn Rivera. States should express firm support of the work of the Group of Experts on Nicaragua and OHCHR and call on Nicaragua to take urgent steps to meet the recommendations made to it by the Group of Experts, as well as OHCHR and – in the words of Nicaraguan HRD Cristina Huerta made in December at the Council – to call on Nicaragua to ‘put an end to the State violence against women and civil society and retake the path to democracy’. ISHR is co-organising a side event ‘The situation for exiled Nicaraguan activists a year after being released and stripped of nationality’ on 5th March, 15.30-16.30pm Geneva time, Room XXVII Palais de Nations. Co-organisers include the Permanent Missions of Argentina, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Paraguay, as well as NGOs CCPR, Race and Equality and PBI.
Occupied Western Sahara In October 2023, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention requested the immediate release of 18 Gdeim Izik prisoners from Western Sahara, held for over 13 years in Moroccan jails. In the last six years, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has rendered at least 11 decisions highlighting a systematic pattern of violations of the right to due process and fair trial, arbitrary arrests, torture, as well as violations to the right to freedom of expression, discrimination based on language, ethnicity and religion, especially targeting Saharawi activists advocating for the right to self-determination of Western Sahara. Prior, UN CAT issued five decisions on the Gdeim Izik prisoners, including in the case of Human rights activists Enaâma Asfari. Western Sahara is a former Spanish colony that remains under Moroccan occupation (despite a 1992 UN governed agreement for a referendum on independence, which Morocco continues to fail to comply with). In 1990, the General Assembly had reaffirmed that Western Sahara was a question of decolonisation
which remained to be completed by the people of Western Sahara. We urge States to call on Morocco to implement the decisions of the CAT and the WGAD and unconditionally release the Gdeim Izik arbitrarily detained activists, and all arbitrarily detained journalists and human rights defenders, while putting an end to all forms of harassment and reprisals against prisoners and their family. We further urge States to call on Morocco to put an end to its crackdown on civil society, particularly Saharawi human rights defenders in the occupied territory, ensure they are able to conduct their human rights work, and provide access to occupied Western Sahara to human rights bodies, including OHCHR, special procedures, and human rights organisations. As a member of the Human Rights Council and its president, and in line with resolution 60/251, Morocco should ‘uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights’ and ‘fully cooperate with the Council’. In his update to the Council in March 2023, High Commissioner Turk highlighted that his Office has not been granted access to Western Sahara for the last eight years. Local human rights organisations report that international organisations and observers are barred from entering the territory to carry out meaningful human rights documentation and that human rights defenders trying to document and ensure monitoring are being targeted by the State.
In a joint statement, Special Procedures decried ‘the systematic and relentless targeting of human rights defenders in retaliation for exercising their rights to freedom of association and expression to promote human rights in Western Sahara’. They urged Morocco to ‘stop targeting human rights defenders and journalists standing up for human rights issues related to Western Sahara, and allow them to work without reprisals’.
Saudi Arabia According to ALQST’s annual report, despite the Saudi authorities’ recent efforts to open up to tourism and host international events, a prevailing climate of closure prevails – independent monitors are denied access to the country, the prison system is shrouded in secrecy, and trials are held behind closed doors.
In this ominous atmosphere, and following the almost complete diplomatic rehabilitation of crown prince and de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman, widespread violations persist, including but not limited to: further decades-long prison sentences, and even a death sentence, meted out for peaceful social media use; the prosecution of women for their choice of clothing and advocacy for women’s rights; prisoners of conscience held incommunicado beyond the expiration of their sentences; arbitrary travel bans imposed on detainees and their family members in a form of collective punishment; and the execution of 172 individuals carried out over 2023, with several young men at imminent risk of execution for alleged crimes committed as minors.
In light of these alarming developments, ALQST and ISHR call on the Council to adopt a resolution mandating an independent international monitoring and investigative mechanism to address the human rights violations perpetrated in and by Saudi Arabia.
Sudan The humanitarian crisis in Sudan is dire, with millions displaced, widespread attacks on civilians including systematic SGBV as a weapon of war, amidst lack of global attention and adequate funding to respond to the crisis. Sudan faced a total communication blackout on 7 February 2024, following earlier disruptions at the end of January. These shutdowns severely endanger women human rights defenders and their work, hindering their ability to document atrocities and access essential resources such as mobile banking apps. Since the attack on Wad Madani in December 2023, WHRDs have lost resources, faced displacement, and enormous challenges searching for safe locations across states and neighboring countries. Dozens of women defenders were harassed, detained, summoned and threatened by both warring parties during the last few weeks. In recent months, the Sudanese Military Forces have intensified attacks on human rights defenders, journalists, and humanitarian workers in their controlled areas. Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have arrested civilians, engaged in looting, and perpetrated sexual violence systematically. WHRDs struggle to operate in these areas as the risks of sexual violence are expanding, with at least 5 WHRDs and first responders detained, summoned, or harassed recently. The attacks, which have resulted in the deaths of 4 WHRDs including 2 journalists and 11 women health workers, have occurred in territories controlled by both warring factions. Threats against medical services by both the RSF and the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) continue to be reported including killings and kidnappings of health workers, attacks on hospitals and theft of medical supplies; exacerbating the humanitarian crisis for millions internally displaced without access to necessities and healthcare, and at risk of diseases such as outbreak of cholera. Sudanese rights groups have documented more than 2000 cases of enforced disappearances in Khartoum and other affected regions since the start of the war, with victims often detained by RSF or SAF, some killed under unclear circumstances. Detainees endure inhumane conditions, lacking medical care, proper food, and subjected to torture and sexual violence. Authorities in safer regions of Northern and Eastern Sudan dissolved resistance committees, active since the 2018 protests. Governors of five states prohibited information dissemination on social media, detaining journalists and activists in three states. Peaceful civic activities are banned or unauthorized in several states, creating hostile environments for WHRDs. The civic space in Sudan is closed with increasing militarization of the state and communities. During the last three months, Sudanese authorities launched a mobilization campaign to arm civilians, leading to unprecedented threats to women, peace and security and GBV in the areas out of the fighting zones. The Council will hold, on 1 March, an enhanced interactive dialogue on the comprehensive report of the HC, presented with the assistance of the designated Expert on human rights in the Sudan, on the situation of human rights in the Sudan. During the debate, States should reiterate joint civil society calls on the warring parties for an immediate ceasefire and the prompt creation of safe corridors for humanitarian aid organisations and groups, and to guarantee the safety of their operations; an immediate restoration of telecommunications across the country; and cease attacks on health facilities, medical supplies, and health workers, and uphold obligations under international humanitarian law. States should also declare their support for joint civil society calls on States to create an immediate long-term protection program for WHRDs; provide support for the FFM and other international mechanisms mandated to document human rights violations in Sudan, including by ensuring that these entities have the necessary resources to carry out their work effectively; support local initiatives providing humanitarian support to local communities as well as support services to victims, and to support civil society’s documentation and reporting efforts so that the evidence obtained can be used for future judicial proceedings; to call for the disclosure of the whereabouts of the disappeared and the release of detainees, and to urgently address the issue of enforced disappearances and grave violations in detention centers, including GBV; and to call for the reinforcement and protection of medical staff in accordance with international humanitarian law.
Tunisia
Since 25 July 2021, President Saied has dismantled Tunisia’s democratic institutions, undermined judicial independence, stifled the exercise of freedom of expression and repressed dissent. In June 2023, the High Commissioner urged Tunisia to ‘change course’, ‘respect due process and fair trial standards in all judicial proceedings, cease trying civilians before military courts and release all those arbitrarily detained’. He expressed ‘deep concern at the increasing restrictions on the right to freedom of expression and press freedom in Tunisia’, noting that vague legislation is being used to criminalise independent journalism and stifle criticism of the authorities. He further addressed the ongoing crackdown ‘against judges, politicians, labour leaders, businesspeople and civil society actors’. The situation has since further deteriorated. Authorities have continued to escalate their crackdown on free speech and peaceful dissent, using unfounded conspiracy, terrorism and expression-related charges against opposition figures, journalists, lawyers, judges and businesspeople. Public remarks from the president about the prosecution of perceived critics has continued to undermine judicial independence. At least 20 people have been in pretrial detention for long periods of time (8 months to more than two years). In November 2023, civil society organisations warned that the draft law on associations submitted to the Tunisian Parliament on 10 October 2023 would violate the right to freedom of association and endanger civic space in Tunisia. The draft law would grant the government pervasive control and oversight over the establishment, activities, operations and funding of independent groups, which are one of the last remaining counterweights to President Kais Saied’s autocratic rule. We urge States to call on Tunisia to refrain from adopting the proposed draft law and, instead, commit to safeguarding the right to freedom of association as enshrined in Decree-law 88 and under international human right law binding on Tunisia. The authorities should ensure that associations are able to operate without political interference, intimidation, harassment or undue restrictions. Moreover, Special Procedures have raised alarm at the collective expulsions targeting sub-Saharan migrants from Tunisia as well as ‘violence and racist hate speech, including perpetrated by the country’s top leadership and law enforcement officials’. While collective expulsions started being documented in early July, they are ongoing and target asylum seekers, refugees and children, to Libya and Algeria.
ISHR reiterates the recommendations by Tunisian civil society, Special Procedures and the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination to put an end to these practices, and for the authorities to investigate, provide remedies to victims, and hold perpetrators accountable. Ukraine Two years on from the launch of Russia’s full scale invasion and war of aggression against Ukraine, the perpetration of which has involved the widespread commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity, it is vital that the Council continue to mandate mechanisms to investigate violations, promote accountability, support victims, and address root causes of conflict.
At the March session of the Council, this should include renewing the mandate of the Commission of Inquiry, the work of which is essential to promote accountability for atrocity crimes in Ukraine, as well as address root causes such as the repression and criminalisation of human rights defenders and independent journalists in Russia itself. The Council will hold an interactive dialogue with the Commission of Inquiry on 19 March. The Council will also hold an interactive dialogue on the OHCHR report on Ukraine on 2 April.
Venezuela The Human Rights Council session just as that Venezuela has suspended OHCHR activities in the country and ordered personnel to leave the country and amid a context of a foretold pre-electoral increase in threats and attacks against defenders.
The arbitrary detention and disappearance of human rights defender Rocío San Miguel, president of NGO Control Cuidadano, on 9 February is evidence of this and of a wider pattern of attacks against defenders, as noted by the UN fact-finding mission on Venezuela. The re-activation of the process related to a highly restrictive and much criticised NGO bill at the start of this year, is a sign of the government’s interest in restricting civil society’s ability to operate. This is no time to reduce efforts to demand the respect of human rights in the country including the respect of the rights of human rights defenders, and to express support for ongoing monitoring and reporting work by OHCHR in the country and by the UN Fact-Finding Mission. Venezuela will be the focus of two specific debates during the session. On 19 March, the High Commissioner will present an oral update informed by the conclusions and recommendations of his team in the country. The UN fact-finding mission will provide an oral update on the 20 March. Both of these updates will be followed by interactive dialogues. During this session, States must be of one voice in calling for the reactivation of the work of OHCHR in the country. Also, the immediate release of Rocío San Miguel and that of Javier Tarazona, arbitrarily detained almost three years ago. States must also express deep concern at the re-introduction of the NGO bill and call on the government to cease threats and attacks against defenders in the country. States should restate the importance of the work of Venezuelan defenders and commit to support their work politically and, where possible, financially. States must insist on the reestablishment of an effective OHCHR presence in the country and speak to the essential, ongoing work of the UN fact-finding mission, stressing upon Venezuela the importance of its cooperation with all the UN bodies and mechanisms with mandates related to Venezuela and with all Special Procedures. States’ participation in the two interactive dialogues on Venezuela – through individual and joint statements – is key to making evident that the human rights situation in the country and the UN’s monitoring and reporting mechanisms remain a priority and reassuring those demanding accountability for human rights violations in Venezuela that they are being heard.
Yemen In 2023, Mwatana documented the continuation of human rights violations committed by various conflicting parties in Yemen, including ground and aerial attacks, attacks on vital facilities, child recruitment, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, and torture, sexual violence, attacks on African migrants, denial of humanitarian access, as well as the the impact of the widespread presence of landmines and explosive devices. In 2023, over 40 civil society organisations, victims and survivor associations from Yemen launched the Yemen Declaration for Justice and Reconciliation, in which they set forth their common vision for achieving justice that is inclusive, victim-centred, and includes accountability, reparations, and redress.
ISHR calls on the international community to address the demands made by Yemeni civil society, including for an independent, impartial, and fair accountability for all crimes under international humanitarian law and international human rights law committed in Yemen, by all parties to the conflict. Failure to address atrocities in the past has led to a culture of impunity throughout generations. We urge the international community to take effective measures to assess the full extent of civilian harm in coordination with local civil society and call on parties to the conflict to ensure reparation and redress.
Other country situations The High Commissioner will provide an oral update to the Council on 4 March. The Council will consider updates, reports on and is expected to consider resolutions addressing a range of country situations, in some instances involving the renewal of the relevant expert mandates. These include: Interactive dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on Afghanistan Enhanced interactive dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on Eritrea ID with the Special Rapporteur on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and a presentation of the report of the High Commissioner Interactive Dialogue with the High Commissioner on Belarus Interactive dialogue on the High Commissioner oral update on Myanmar, and interactive dialogue with the Special Rapporteur Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on Iran and Interactive Dialogue on the comprehensive report of the independent international fact-finding mission Interactive Dialogue with the Commission of Inquiry on Syria Enhanced interactive dialogue on the comprehensive written report of the Commission on Human Rights’ South Sudan and the participation of the High Commissioner, and an interactive Dialogue on the OHCHR report on South Sudan High-level Dialogue with the Independent Expert on Central African Republic Interactive Dialogue with the High Commissioner and the Independent Expert on Haiti Interactive Dialogue with the International Expert on Colombia, and presentation of the report on the OHCHR activities in Colombia under General debate 2
Resolutions to be presented to the Council’s 55th session At the organisational meeting on 12 February the following resolutions were announced (States leading the resolution in brackets): Combating intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization of, and discrimination, incitement to violence and violence against, persons based on religion or belief (Pakistan on behalf of the OIC) Human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and the obligation to ensure accountability and justice (Pakistan on behalf of the OIC) Right of the Palestinian people to self-determination (Pakistan on behalf of the OIC) Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan (Pakistan on behalf of the OIC) Human rights in the occupied Syrian Golan (Pakistan on behalf of the OIC) Human rights and the environment (Costa Rica, Maldives, Morocco, Slovenia, Switzerland) – mandate renewal Prevention of genocide (Armenia) The right to work (Egypt, Greece, Indonesia, Mexico, Romania) The right to food (Cuba) Promotion of the enjoyment of the cultural rights of everyone and respect for cultural diversity (Cuba) – mandate renewal The effects of foreign debt and other related international financial obligations of States on the full enjoyment of all human rights (Cuba) The right to adequate housing (Brazil, Finland, Germany, Namibia) Combating violence, discrimination, and harmful practices against intersex persons (Australia, Chile, Finland ,South Africa) Human rights in Ukraine stemming from the Russian aggression (Ukraine) The role of States in countering the negative impact of disinformation on the enjoyment and realization of human rights (Ukraine, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, UK, US) The right to privacy in the digital age (Austria, Brazil, Germany, Liechtenstein, Mexico) – mandate renewal Cooperation with Georgia (Georgia) Situation of Human Rights in the Republic of South Sudan ( Albania, Norway, UK, US) – mandate renewal The human rights situation in the Syrian Arab Republic (United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Jordan, the Netherlands, Qatar, Turkiye and the United States of America) – mandate renewal Torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment (Denmark) Promoting and strengthening a culture of peace (Gambia, Lesotho, Chile, Mozambique, South Sudan, Côte d’Ivoire, Kazakhstan, Botswana) The rights of persons belonging to minorities (Austria, Slovenia, Mexico) The right of persons with disabilities (New Zealand and Mexico) The situation of human rights in Belarus (European Union) The situation of human rights in the DPRK (European Union) – mandate renewal The situation of human rights in Myanmar (European Union) – mandate renewal Freedom of religion or belief (European Union) Rights of the child (EU and GRULAC) Situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran (Iceland, Moldova, North Macedonia, United Kingdom) and the deteriorating situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, especially with respect to women and children (Iceland and Germany) – two mandate renewals in one resolution. Furthermore, according to the voluntary calendar for resolutions, it is possible that more resolutions could also be presented at this session. Read the calendar here.
Adoption of Universal Periodic Review (UPR) reports During this session, the Council will adopt the UPR working group reports on Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde, Cameroon, Canada, Colombia, Cuba, Djibouti, Germany, Russian Federation, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Uzbekistan. ISHR supports human rights defenders in their interaction with the UPR. We publish and submit briefing papers regarding the situation facing human rights defenders in some States under review and advocate for the UPR to be used as a mechanism to support and protect human rights defenders on the ground.
ISHR is organising a side event on 6 March at 13:00 (CET) on the role of defenders in fostering accountability for atrocity crimes. Further information will be published on ISHR’s website.
ISHR is co-organising a side event ‘The situation for exiled Nicaraguan activists a year after being released and stripped of nationality’ on 5 March, 15.30-16.30pm (CET), Room XXVII, Palais de Nations. Other co-organisers include the Permanent Missions of Argentina, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Paraguay, as well as NGOs CCPR, Race and Equality and PBI. ISHR is co-organising a side event, ‘Resisting Exile: Voices of Human Rights Defenders’ on 5 March, 2pm Palais de Nations, along with CCPR and Race and Equality.
Stay up-to-date by following 
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 