In the study The Landscape of Public International Funding for Human Rights Defenders, released on 12 June 2024, ProtectDefenders.eu sheds light on the critical challenges faced by human rights defenders (HRDs) worldwide, specifically focusing on their financing by public actors.
The research, which combines an analysis of financial data over a period of four years with interviews, investigations, and input from defenders, underscores the pressing need for greater financial support and resources to safeguard the invaluable work of human rights defenders in promoting and protecting human rights globally.
The ProtectDefenders.eu study reveals and documents a concerning trend: while the need for support for HRDs has never been greater, funding levels have stagnated, with only marginal increases observed over the examined period. Despite rhetoric emphasising the importance of prioritising human rights prioritisation, the actual allocation of resources has failed to keep pace with the deteriorating global situation, representing a mere 0.11% of total Official Development Assistance (ODA) annually.
Key findings from the study include:
Disparity in funding: While some donors have demonstrated a strong commitment to supporting HRDs, others have allocated minimal resources, with wide variations observed among donor contributions. This disparity is also evident among different groups of defenders and thematic areas, as well as in funding dynamics by region, with a concerning decrease in attention to the MENA region
Challenges in accessing funds: HRDs continue to face obstacles in accessing international funds, including restrictive funding requirements and bureaucratic hurdles
Need for core funding: There is a critical need for core, flexible, and sustainable funding to enable HRDs to effectively carry out their vital work
Lack in localisation efforts: The study emphasises the importance of localising HRD protection programs and ensuring that funding reaches grassroots organisations and movements.
“This research underscores the urgent need for action to better support human rights defenders and is a call to action for donors, policymakers, and stakeholders to stand in solidarity with human rights defenders,” said Gerald Staberock, Chair of the Board of ProtectDefenders.eu and Secretary-General of the World Organisation against Torture. “HRDs play a vital role in advancing human rights and democracy worldwide, yet they continue to face increasing risks and challenges. It is imperative that donors and stakeholders heed the recommendations outlined in this study to ensure that HRDs receive the support they need to carry out their crucial work.”
In response to these findings, the study presents a series of detailed recommendations aimed at addressing the funding gap and improving support for HRDs. These recommendations include increasing overall funding levels, reducing restrictions on grants, enhancing political and diplomatic support, and investing in donors’ own capacities to better understand the needs and contexts of HRDs.
ProtectDefenders.eu issues a clear call to all donors and public actors to urgently address this situation. Specifically, the demands include:
Increase in public funding: Advocating for an increase in public funding for HRDs from 0.11% to 0.5% for the period 2025-2028.
Building trust through core grants: Urging for more core grants with reduced restrictions, audits, lower result expectations, and extended support horizons.
Directing more grants locally: Advocating for a higher proportion of grants to be allocated to local NGOs to ensure funding reaches grassroots organizations and movements.
Establishment of HRD principles for regranting: Calling upon the community of donors and financiers of HRD work to establish HRD Principles for Regranting, outlining guidelines for more effective and equitable distribution of funds.
On 12 June 2024, Human Rights Watch published a useful, short “questions-and-answers” document which outlines key questions on the global trend of transnational repression.
The term “transnational repression” is increasingly used to refer to state actors reaching beyond their borders to suppress or stifle dissent by targeting human rights defenders, journalists, government critics and opposition activists, academics and others, in violation of their human rights. Particularly vulnerable are nationals or former nationals, members of diaspora communities and those living in exile. Many are asylum seekers or refugees in their place of exile, while others may be at risk of extradition or forced return. Back home, a person’s family members and friends may also be targeted, by way of retribution and with the aim of silencing a relative in exile or forcing their return.
Transnational repression can have far-reaching consequences, including a chilling effect on the rights to freedom of expression and association. While there is no formal legal definition, the framing of transnational repression, which encompasses a wide range of rights abuses, allows us to better understand it and propose victim-centered responses.
What tactics are used?
Documented tactics of transnational repression include killings, abductions, enforced disappearances, unlawful removals, online harassment, the use of digital surveillance including spyware, targeting of relatives, and the abuse of consular services. Interpol’s Red Notice system has also been used as a tool of transnational repression, to facilitate unlawful extraditions. Interpol has made advances in improving its vetting systems, yet governments continue to abuse the Red Notice system by publishing unlawful notices seeking citizens who have fled abroad on spurious charges. This leaves targets vulnerable to arrest and return to their country of origin to be mistreated, even after they have fled to seek safety abroad.
Is transnational repression a new phenomenon?
No, the practice of governments violating human rights beyond their borders is not new. Civil society organizations have been documenting such abuses for decades. What is new, however, is the growing recognition of transnational repression as more than a collection of grave incidents, but also as an increasing phenomenon of global concern, requiring global responses. What is also new is the increasing access to and use of sophisticated technology to harass, threaten, surveil and track people no matter where they are. This makes the reach of transnational repression even more pervasive.
Where is transnational repression happening?
Transnational repression is a global phenomenon. Cases have been documented in countries and regions around the world. The use of technology such as spyware increases the reach of transnational repression, essentially turning an infected device, such as a mobile phone, into a portable surveillance tool, allowing targeted individuals to be spied on and tracked around the world.
Do only “repressive” states commit transnational repression?
While many authoritarian states resort to repressive tactics beyond their own borders, any government that seeks to silence dissent by targeting critics abroad is committing transnational repression. Democratic governments have also contributed to cases of transnational repression, for example through the provision of spyware, collaborating with repressive governments to deny visas or facilitate returns, or relying upon flawed Interpol Red Notices that expose targeted individuals to risk.
Are steps being taken to recognize and address transnational repression?
Increasingly, human rights organizations, UN experts and states are documenting and taking steps to address transnational repression.
For example, Freedom House has published several reports on transnational repression and maintains an online resource documenting incidents globally. Human Rights Watch has published reports, including one outlining cases of transnational repression globally and another focusing on Southeast Asia. Amnesty International has published a report on transnational repression in Europe. Many other nongovernmental organizations are increasingly producing research and reports on the issue. In her report on journalists in exile, the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression dedicated a chapter to transnational repression. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights used the term in a June 2024 statement.
Certain governments are increasingly aware of the harms posed by transnational repression. Some are passing legislation to address the problem, while others are signing joint statements or raising transnational repression in international forums. However, government responses are often piecemeal, and a more cohesive and coordinated approach is needed.
What should be done?
Governments should speak out and condemn all cases of transnational repression, including by their friends and allies. They should take tangible steps to address transnational repression, including by adopting rights-respecting legal frameworks and policies to address it. Governments should put victims at the forefront of their response to these forms of repression. They should be particularly mindful of the risks and fears experienced by refugee and asylum communities. They should investigate and appropriately prosecute those responsible. Interpol should continue to improve vetting process by subjecting governments with a poor human rights record to more scrutiny when they submit Red Notices. Interpol should be transparent on which governments are continually abusing the Red Notice system, and limit their access to the database.
At the international level, more can be done to integrate transnational repression within existing human rights reporting, and to mandate dedicated reporting on cases of transnational repression, trends, and steps needed to address it.
I am not a professional obituary writer, but I surely wished I were, as writing about my dear friend Leah Levin deserves the best possible skills. Fortunately, I received some excellent input from her caring family of which I am making good use. A celebration of Leah’s life will be held by the family on 13 June, 4 pm BST which can also be followed online.
Leah Levin, was a well-known figure in the international human rights movement of the 1970’s and onwards. She died of cardiac arrest on 25 May, 2024, at the formidable age of 98. For over half a century, she served and led a range of human rights organisations and collaborated globally with some of the world’s leading activists. For which she received an honorary doctorate from the University of Essex in 1992 and an OBE in 2001.
She was the author of UNESCO’s “Human Rights: Questions and Answers”, one of the world’s most widely disseminated books on human rights, (translated into more than 30 languages).
From 1982-1992, she was director of JUSTICE, a pioneering organisation that sought to right miscarriages of justice and which was a national section of the International Commission of Jurists . She served as a board member or trustee of the United Nations Association, the Anti-Slavery Society, International Alert, Redress, Readers International and The International Journal of Human Rights. But most of all, I remember her from the work she did to make sure that we would not forget one of our most impressive friends: Martin Ennals, who had led Amnesty from 1968 to 1980 and had been one of her closest friends until his death in 1981. [see his biography in the Encyclopedia of Human Rights, OUP, 2009, Vol 2, pp 135-138].
Frances D’Souza, said about Leah: “without any pretension she was nearly always right. She hit the nail on the head whether dealing with world affairs or people. She made a significant difference by her wise counsel and fact that she could really see what the issues were, read the situation and do something about it.”
Leah Levin had the special talent to draw other like-minded people to her and help coalesce a community of activists with whom she would collaborate throughout her entire life.
Her own life story is one of human rights struggle: Leah was born Sarah Leah Kacev on 1 April 1926 in Lithuania. She grew up as Leah Katzeff in Piketberg, South Africa, a small, rural town in Western Cape to where the family had to flee to escape poverty and anti-Semitism in the difficult years after the First World War and Russian revolution. Leah was the first of four children and the first person in her family to go to university. She graduated in 1945, when at the end of the second world war, the Katzeffs found out that their family along with their entire Jewish community in Mazeikiai, had been murdered by local Lithuanians organized by the Germans in the very first days of the Nazi advance in 1941.
In 1947 she married Archie Levin, fifteen years her senior. Like Leah, Archie was the child of European Jewish immigrants. Together they set up a new business, writing travel guides to Central and Southern Africa. In 1960, disgusted by the repression of anti-apartheid protest, the couple moved to the British colony of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) with their two children Michal and Jeremy. A third son, David, was born in Salisbury (now Harare).
In Rhodesia, Leah completed a second degree in international relations at the University of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, while her husband became politically active. His activities angered those in power; shortly before Rhodesia unilaterally declared independence. Archie was tipped off that he was likely to be arrested. He rapidly left for the UK with his daughter Michal and later was joined by his son Jeremy; a few months later, Leah and her infant son David joined the rest of the family in the UK.
In London, Leah found a volunteer post as Secretary of the newly founded United Nations Association. The UNA human rights committee brought together people who became lifelong friends as well as colleagues: Martin Ennals, Sir Nigel Rodney, Amnesty’s first legal officer and later UN rapporteur on torture, and Kevin Boyle, who ran the Human Rights Centre of the University of Essex. After the death in 1977 of her husband Archie, Leah threw herself still more wholeheartedly into human rights work. In 1978, she took a job as Secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society, which connected her to the United Nations in Geneva. And in 1982 she moved to run JUSTICE for a decade. In 1992, she co-founded Redress, representing victims of torture to obtain justice and reparation for them.
Even when fully retired Leah continued to keep an active interest in children and grandchildren as well as her human rights “children”. I will bitterly miss her almost yearly phone calls to check on me to make sure I am doing the right thing.
On 23 May 2024 the IACHR Press Office (cidh-prensa@oas.org) informed us that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has issued Resolution 01/2024, recognizing national and international election monitors as human rights defenders based on the intrinsic connection between respecting and protecting human rights and defending democracy.
The Commission highlights the important role of election monitors for the defense of democracy and the rule of law. Through their activities, electoral observers stand up for civil and political rights including the rights to freedom of association, assembly, expression, access to information, equality before the law, and non-discrimination, as well as for the rights to a fair trial and to judicial protection.
The activities of election monitors help to protect the rights held in Article XX of the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man and in Article 23 of the American Convention on Human Rights, both of which mention the right to vote and to be elected by universal suffrage in periodic elections.
In the case of national observers, election monitoring is a form of political participation and a way of exercising political rights by looking after, defending, and fostering the principles that should prevail in election processes, including transparency, certainty, legality, fairness, and universal suffrage by secret ballot among a plurality of political options.
The actions of electoral observers ultimately seek to ensure the integrity of election processes and therefore to preserve expressions of citizens’ sovereign will, which is one of the main tenets of representative democracy according to inter-American and international instruments for the protection of human rights.
In its resolution, the Commission acknowledges the importance of electoral observation missions. The IACHR calls on States to enable suitable conditions for independent and impartial election monitoring and to ensure that election monitors can do their work freely, without retaliation of any kind, and enjoy protection from any risks they may face as a result of their efforts.
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.
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 