Julian Borger in the Guardian of 4 May 2023 tells how an NGO teams up with Hollywood to sharpen human rights focus.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) has decided to take on Hollywood to improve the visibility and awareness of humanitarian issues in popular culture. As part of the move, the advocacy group has signed up with a talent agent firm, Activist Artists Management (AAM), to provide “scripted and unscripted content in film and television”, an HRW statement said…
The group has set up a department of three staff and additional consultants, to deal with Hollywood full-time – advising writers and directors on incorporating realistic treatment of human rights issues into their work.
“We’re excited to work with Hollywood to spread that message and equip committed activists, advocates and artists standing up for justice through the stories they tell,” said Tirana Hassan, HRW’s new executive director.
Amanda Alampi, the organisation’s director of campaigns and public engagement, argued it was a logical step towards deepening the impact of HRW’s investigative work. “We have consistently done human rights investigations and told real-life stories to try to put a human face on it. But increasingly, we think that scripted storytelling is going to be really important in this area,” Alampi said. “So what we’re trying to do is think about – how do we insert a positive human rights message into popular culture? And Hollywood seems like a great place to start.”
She said one way HRW would try to wield influence is to work with producers and writers “to encourage them to think about human rights to choose to tell stories more responsibly” in movie projects already in the pipeline.
“Then a second area is really about whether we can pitch story ideas that would actually tell effective human rights stories,” Alampi added. “We already use our meticulous fact-finding to sway policymakers and put perpetrators in the dock. This is about reaching a broader public with stories that illustrate human rights issues – especially through unexpected storytellers and platforms, like space or superheroes.”..
Alampi argued that allowing Hollywood to script and fictionalise true stories would not impinge on HRW’s reputation for factual accuracy, because the group would not be central to creating the fiction, but would simply pass on ideas that could be a starting point for movies with a human rights message.
“This is not about getting attention for HRW or getting us into a story, it’s about seeding human rights through effective storytelling, so I don’t think that’s a concern,” Alampi said. “Often our work in entertainment advocacy is focused on being a connector between our partners, impacted people and storytellers who could help share those stories with wider audiences.”
Bernie Cahill, an AAM founding partner, said: “Activist is honored to partner with Human Rights Watch to amplify the important stories of its decades-long fight for justice, dignity, compassion and equality for people everywhere.”
WITNESS recognizes the great risks that environmental defenders take to stand up to power, and understand that the collection of visual evidence is only one strategy communities use to protect their environmental human rights. It wants to support this movement by sharing information and good practices to help community-based documenters collect visual documentation of environmental human rights crimes and violations so that it can be effectively used in advocacy and accountability processes. This Guide is primarily for community members who:
Live where industries that mine, extract oil and gas, build dams, cut timber, clear land for agri-business developments, grab land for high-end real-estate development, and do so in a way that violates the environmental human rights of communities
Want to—and can—safely document these violations with phones, cameras, and drones
Want to—and can—safely use the documentation to protect human rights
Would like to help train others to safely collect relevant and reliable visual documentation for human rights advocacy and accountability.
Millions of small and large NGOs (non-governmental organizations) work independently of governments around the world. You can work for NGOs dedicated to issues like healthcare, education, economic development, children’s rights, reproductive justice, and humanitarian aid, but what types of jobs are available? In this article, Human Rights Careers describes 20 types of NGO jobs, including what salaries you can expect, what qualifications you need, and what tasks you might be responsible for. The overview is slanted towards the USA, but may still serve its purpose:
Ruth Michaelson in the Guardian of Friday 24 March 2023 reports that human rights activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja’s health has suffered so much inside a Bahraini prison that his daughter Maryam has offered to trade places with him. She fears that without urgent action, her father will slowly die behind bars without being able to see his family.
“I don’t know how much longer my dad has. I spend every day dreading each time the phone rings, as it might be someone calling me to let me know my dad is no longer around,” said Maryam. “I know he has serious health issues and the authorities are using [lack of] access to proper treatment as a method of punishment. I don’t want to wait around for my dad to be released to us in a coffin. I can’t do that.” She added: “The central issue is that my father shouldn’t be in prison to begin with.” [see: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2022/11/29/mea-laureate-abdulhadi-al-khawaja-facing-new-charges-for-protesting-injustice-in-jau-prison/]
Khawaja is one of Bahrain’s most prominent human rights campaigners. He has a decades-long history of activism, and was arrested in the dead of night at his family home in April 2011 for his involvement in pro-democracy protests that swept the kingdom. Two months later, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Twelve years into his sentence, his family say the Danish-Bahraini dual national is being denied crucial medical treatment as punishment for his status as a human rights defender, raising the risk that Khawaja could die behind bars without urgent intervention from the Danish authorities. See: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/laureates/4d45e316-c636-4d02-852d-7bfc2b08b78d
He was convicted of terrorism and attempting to overthrow the government, charges that were condemned as politicised by rights groups. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary detention declared that the sentence was directly linked to Khawaja’s desire to freely express his political beliefs and participate in protests, despite the Bahraini authorities’ ruling that anti-government protests were illegal. A spokesperson for the Bahraini government, when asked about Khawaja’s case, said that “freedom of expression and opinion is a constitutional right and no one is detained because of their political views or activism.”
On 27 March 2023 “Portrait of a Stranger,” a creative multimedia collaboration between world-renowned photographer and storyteller Platon, and UNHCR, was launched in partnership with the Movies That Matter International Human Rights Film Festival in The Hague, Netherlands.
The 18-minute film features interviews and portraits of over 20 refugees who fled conflict and persecution in various parts of the world, exploring the universal desire to be free, safe, respected and valued, and to belong.
Over the last year, UNHCR and Platon interviewed a diverse group of refugees ranging in age, nationality, ethnicity and personal circumstances. The result, Portrait of a Stranger, is a holistic, multimedia experience, marrying film and photography. It asks audiences to look beyond our differences and instead focus on our shared humanity.
“Living in exile may be their life circumstance, but it is not what defines them,” said Platon. “I hope the images and voices of the refugees in this film will help audiences focus on the shared humanity that unites us, rather than the barriers that divide us. Not only for these particular refugees but for all people forced to flee around the world.”
As the number of people forcibly displaced continues to rise – last year there were more than 100 million people uprooted globally – it is hoped that the collaboration will help to reframe the narratives and perceptions around people forced to flee.
“This film and these images are powerful reminders of who refugees really are. They are people like your neighbour, your friend, your colleague. Like you and me, each with our own personality; our hopes; our dreams,” United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, said. “By amplifying the voices of refugees, the film offers an important reality check to counter the negative public discourse we often hear about people forced to flee.”
About Platon:
Photographer, communicator and storyteller Platon has gained worldwide fame with his portraits. Platon has worked with a range of international publications including Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Esquire, and won a Peabody Award for his photo essays for The New Yorker. He has photographed over 30 covers for TIME Magazine and is a World Press Photo laureate. He is currently on the board for Arts and Culture at the World Economic Forum. In 2013, Platon founded The People’s Portfolio, a non-profit foundation dedicated to celebrating emerging leaders of human rights and civil rights around the world. See also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2015/02/25/photographer-platon-speaks-about-human-rights-in-indiana-wells-on-february-27
On 27 March 2023 7:00 Human Rights Watch said that the Vietnamese authorities should immediately release land rights activist Truong Van Dung and drop all charges against him. Police in Hanoi arrested Truong Van Dung in May 2022 on charges of “conducting propaganda against the state.” A Hanoi court on March 28, 2023 sentenced him to six years in prison.
Vietnamese authorities have convicted at least 163 people since 2018 for exercising their rights to freedom of expression or association under vague or over broad laws that criminalize protesting or criticizing the government. At least 18 others have been charged and are awaiting trial. The authorities have brought many of these cases using the propaganda charge, criminalized under articles 88 and 117 of Vietnam’s penal code.
“Truong Van Dung is the latest in a long line of human rights defenders silenced by the Vietnamese government for protesting against human rights violations and advocating for reforms,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Democratic governments forging closer ties with Vietnam need to speak out publicly and forcefully in his support and call on Vietnam to release all political prisoners and take genuine steps toward reform.”
Truong Van Dung, 65, first became active in land rights advocacy in the 2000s, campaigning against forced confiscation of his own house. In the early 2010s, he joined other activists and began to advocate for basic rights, including freedom of expression, association, and assembly. Between 2011 and 2018, he also participated in numerous anti-China and pro-environment protests. He joined a protest opposing Vietnam’s problematic 2018 law on cybersecurity and publicly boycotted Vietnam’s national “elections,” a process controlled by the Vietnam Communist Party which is neither free nor fair.
In December 2013, Truong Van Dung and other activists founded a humanitarian group, Hoi Bau bi Tuong Than (Association of Gourd and Squash Mutual Assistance), to provide financial and spiritual support for political prisoners, land rights petitioners, and their families.
After his arrest in May 2022, Truong Van Dung was held incommunicado for more than nine months. He was allowed to meet with his lawyer for the first time in March. His family has not been allowed to see him. Vietnam’s courts, controlled by the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam, are not independent and hearings and trials do not meet international standards. “How can Truong Van Dung get a fair trial when Vietnam’s legal system isn’t independent and the laws under which he is charged violate basic international human rights standards – and what he has been accused of shouldn’t even be crimes,” Robertson said.
Tirana Hassan, a lawyer and veteran human rights investigator who has documented human rights abuses throughout crises and conflicts globally, has been named the next executive director of Human Rights Watch, the organization announced. Hassan was previously the Human Rights Watch chief programs officer and had been serving as acting executive director since September 2022, following the departure of its long-time leader, Kenneth Roth.
“As new executive director of Human Rights Watch, Tirana Hassan brings impeccable credentials as a human rights practitioner and an ambitious vision for human rights solutions to the challenges the world is facing,” said Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, CEO and president of the International Peace Institute and the former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. “A hugely experienced activist, Tirana will be a formidable leader and very much a force to be reckoned with!”
With decades of experience in the human rights and humanitarian fields, Hassan, who began her career as a social worker and spent many years working with women and children in conflict and crisis situations, first joined Human Rights Watch in 2010, covering emergencies across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. She went on to become Amnesty International’s director of crisis response before returning to Human Rights Watch as its chief programs officer in 2020, leading the organization’s research, advocacy, legal, and communications departments.
“Tirana has the rare combination of wide-ranging investigative experience, strategic creativity, and a deep commitment to human rights principle that Human Rights Watch needs to tackle the complex human rights challenges the world is facing,” said Kenneth Roth, former executive director at Human Rights Watch, who stepped down in August 2022. “I am thrilled that she will lead Human Rights Watch into the future.”
When she headed Amnesty International’s crisis team, Hassan oversaw the development of innovative uses of technology to advance human rights investigations in Myanmar, Syria, and other crisis areas. She brings a proven track record of developing ambitious programs to address critical human rights issues and will lead the Human Rights Watch’s work with activists, survivors, and civil society to head off the rising threats to human rights around the world.
One of Hassan’s priorities will be to call out government selective applications of human rights obligations. The swift and bold response to the crisis in Ukraine including a UN Human Rights Council commission of inquiry and multiple condemnations by the UN General Assembly – has shown what is possible when governments work together, while the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin shows that no one is beyond the reach of justice. However, the same governments have often at best responded in a lukewarm fashion or at worst turned a blind eye to the plight of other victims. Hassan will focus on using all possible levers to push governments to realize their legal obligations to victims everywhere, including in Afghanistan, Israel and Palestine, Ethiopia, and Iran.
Hassan was born in Singapore to a Pakistani father whose family left India during partition and a Malaysian-born Sri Lankan and Chinese mother. Her family resettled in Australia in the 1970s after her father’s academic research on Singapore’s housing policies triggered the ire of the government, which was cracking down on dissent. She has said family stories of racism, prejudice, and repression helped shape her world view and contributed to her decision to work on behalf of rights for dispossessed people.
After receiving a bachelor’s degree in social work from the University of South Australia, Hassan worked as a social worker in Los Angeles, London, and Adelaide, counseling homeless young people before obtaining a law degree from the University of Adelaide. During her last year of law school, she co-founded the Woomera Lawyers Group, a refugee advocacy organization that provided legal services to asylum seekers detained in Australia’s notorious desert detention center. She represented refugees and asylum seekers from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran who were detained in the remote facility and later went on to work in the humanitarian sector. Hassan also holds a master’s degree in international human rights law from Oxford University.
“I’m honored and humbled to lead this exceptional organization at a moment when the defense of human rights feels more urgent than ever,” Hassan said. “I look forward to building on Human Rights Watch’s formidable foundation to uplift the human rights defenders we work with and the communities we serve to put pressure on those in power to realize a rights-respecting future for us all.”
Prosecutors in Thailand should immediately withdraw the criminal defamation cases brought by Thammakaset Company Ltd. against three prominent human rights defenders for their support of other activists facing criminal charges, Human Rights Watch said on 16 March 2023. The Thai government should act to repeal criminal defamation provisions and introduce strong safeguards to prevent the use of frivolous, vexatious, or malicious legal actions that would have chilling effects on free speech.
On March 14, 2023, the Bangkok South Criminal Court began the trial that involves 28 counts of alleged criminal defamation under Thailand’s Criminal Code sections 326 and 328. The charges stem from posts or re-posts on social media by Angkhana Neelapaijit, Puttanee Kangkun, and Thanaporn Saleephol expressing solidarity with other human rights defenders already facing lawsuits brought by Thammakaset for alleging labor rights abuses at the company’s chicken farm in Lopburi Province. The company has filed at least 37 civil and criminal cases against rights defenders, journalists, and workers since 2016.
“The Thai authorities should not help companies use criminal defamation or other legal avenues to silence workers from filing complaints about their working conditions or human rights defenders or journalists for reporting about alleged abuses at the company,” said Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The charges against Angkhana, Puttanee, and Thanaporn should be immediately dropped, and Thai authorities should act to prevent similar cases from being filed in the future.”
The United Nations Human Rights Committee has stated in its General Comment No. 34 on freedom of expression that governments “should put in place effective measures to protect against attacks aimed at silencing those exercising their right to freedom of expression, including persons who engage in the gathering and analysis of information on the human rights situation who publish human rights-related reports.”
On December 16, 2022, the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights urged Thai authorities to take action to stop the Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation (SLAPP) lawsuits increasingly used by Thai companies to intimidate reporters and human rights advocates.
The Working Group specifically mentioned Thammakaset, stating that: “The cases filed by companies, such as Thammakaset Company Limited, against human rights defenders are a clear example of businesses abusing the legal system in order to censor, intimidate, and silence criticism through SLAPPs as a method of judicial harassment.” See also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2022/04/28/eu-finally-moves-on-law-to-protect-media-from-legal-abuse-slapps/
Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha has repeatedly emphasized the importance of companies respecting human rights in their operations and upholding the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. In October 2019, Thailand was the first country in Asia to announce a National Action Plan on Business and Human Rights, committing to protect human rights defenders and prevent judicial harassment. But the charges against Angkhana, Puttanee, and Thanaporn, as well as the failure to assist those still facing many of the other civil and criminal cases filed by Thammakaset, stand in stark contradiction to the Thai government’s pledges to take action to protect rights, Human Rights Watch said.
In 2018, the National Assembly amended the Criminal Procedure Code to prevent the misuse of criminal cases. While that is a useful step, the Thai government should repeal all criminal defamation provisions. Neither prosecutors nor courts in Thailand have actually carried out, much less considered, amended section 161/1, which allows judges to dismiss and forbid the refiling of a criminal complaint by a private individual if the complaint is filed “in bad faith or with misrepresentation of facts to harass or take advantage of a defendant.” Furthermore, section 165/2 allows the presentation of evidence to show that the complaint “lacks merit.”
These reform provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code remain unused and untested, though. It is also crucial to provide prosecutors with adequate resources and support to exercise their powers under section 21 of the 2010 Public Prosecutor Organ and Public Prosecutors Act to screen out frivolous cases.
Human Rights Watch, along with an increasing number of governments and international agencies, has consistently called for the repeal of criminal defamation laws because they are an inherently disproportionate punishment for expressions of speech judged to damage reputations. Civil defamation laws, when supplemented by strong anti-SLAPP safeguards, balance the need for fair reporting in the public interest with concerns about reputational harm to private actors. In addition, as the charges against Angkhana, Puttanee, and Thanaporn show, criminal defamation laws in Thailand are easily abused and can have adverse impacts on free expression in the public interest.
Thailand should enact comprehensive anti-SLAPP legislation to strengthen safeguards to protect freedom of speech and expression and prevent retaliation against workers, human rights defenders, and journalists, Human Rights Watch said.
The UN special rapporteur on rights of freedom of peaceful assembly and association recommended that “States should protect and facilitate the rights to freedom of expression, assembly and association to ensure that these rights are enjoyed by everyone” including by “enacting anti-SLAPPs legislation, allowing an early dismissal (with an award of costs) of such suits and the use of measures to penalize abuse.”See also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/tag/strategic-lawsuits-against-public-participation-slapps/
“The UN and governments from around the world should share with Thailand their reform efforts to strengthen anti-SLAPP protections and point out that criminal defamation laws coupled with the absence of strong anti-SLAPP protections impede the ability of businesses to conduct essential human rights and environmental due diligence,” Pearson said. “Unless the Thai government moves now to protect Angkhana, Puttanee, and Thanaporn from retaliation, the promises that Thai officials made on business and human rights will ring hollow.”
The regional NGO DefendDefenders highlights every month a “Human Rights Defender of the month”. In January 2023 it was Jane Naini Meriwas. Like many African societies, The Samburu community in Northern Kenya is a gerontocracy – a very hierarchical community in which elders hold sway over almost all private and public matters. Among these predominantly pastoral nomads, very little importance is attached to the young – especially young girls, who are barely given a chance at education and often married off before their first menstrual cycle, but not before they undergo mandatory Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).
It is in this community that Jane Naini Meriwas was born 46 years ago, in Kipsing village, Oldonyiro Subcounty, Isiolo County. When she was 16, her mother passed on, and she watched with great trepidation as her father planned to marry another wife, not sure what that would mean for her or her ambitions for school. As it turned out, fate was on her side. When her father uncharacteristically asked what she thought of his plans, Jane seized the opportunity to stand up for herself and interests:
“I told him that if he wants to go ahead and remarry, he should give me my mother’s share of livestock to support my education since I know I would have no one looking out for me going forward,” says Meriwas. Simultaneously shocked and touched by his daughter’s candidness, Meriwas’ father decided to give the idea of remarrying more thought. By the time Meriwas returned home at the end of the school term, she found that her father had abandoned the idea altogether, and decided to support her to finish school. “I was surprised and elated in equal measure. It also encouraged me to always be confident and speak my mind, assured that I had a father who would always listen to me,” she says. At University, Meriwas studied Community Development, after which she worked with a catholic mission in her community. But her passion to empower more women in her community would not let her rest. “Issues like FGM, girl child beading, forceful abortion, early marriages, wife beating, were still holding my community back and I could not just pursue a personal career and pretend everything was right. I had to do something,” she says. Meriwas teamed up with five other women, with whom they would every month, organise groups of women and sensitise them to resist and push back against these harmful cultural practices. Overtime, they also started engaging with men, encouraging them to educate girl children, using Meriwas’ father as an example. Won over by his daughter’s dedication, Meriwas’ father would tag along to some of these meetings, to testify on the benefits of educating a girl-child. “From a reluctant patriarchal man, he had become a champion of girl-child empowerment,” says Meriwas.Jane Naini Meriwas
Encouraged by the growing consciousness and awareness her and her colleagues’ efforts were igniting in her community, Meriwas, in 2006 resigned her formal job to start Samburu Women Trust, a not-for-profit organisation devoted to the empowerment of Samburu’s indigenous women and girls. Here, the Trust offers pyscho-social support to women who have been abused by their husbands, runs campaigns against FGM, supports girls denied an opportunity to go to school by their parents, and engages local and opinion leaders on the consequences of some of the community’s harmful cultural practices to influence mindset change.
Today, Samburu Women Trust has 50 women and girls of different ages, including a Chief Government Officer, who have been empowered to successfully resist FGM and are instead now local champions against the practice. Over the years, the community’s women and girls who previously never owned land have been empowered to start asserting their rights to land, so much that when the Kenyan Government came to issue land tittles to the Samburu Community last year, of the 1000 land tittles issued, 600 were issued to women.
These gains have marked Meriwas out for hateful threats and profiling by especially the patriarchal elders and local politicians afraid of losing their power and social influence thanks to the emerging social consciousness in the community. At one time, she was trailed and pursued by two men and only managed to escape them by running to the nearest police station.
Still, Meriwas will not relent. Together with her team they are now drafting an anti-beading law for tabling in the Samburu County assembly, to outlaw the culture of girl-child beading. The practice involves the community’s warrior men known as Morans marking out young girls between 9 -15years with beads around their necks and proceeding to have involuntary sexual relations with them, as a way of preparing them for marriage. Since the morans and their beaded girls are always from the same clan, marriage is prohibited, and in the event of a pregnancy, it is terminated through forceful abortion carried out by the community’s women elders. “It is a very abusive practice in so many ways, and it is only the Samburu that practice it. So, we are determined to end it,” she says.Jane Naini Meriwas
Asked about what drives her, she says it is the urge to push the ladder back. “I went to school by a chance, I overcame all the obstacles as an indigenous woman to be where I stand today as a respected woman leader in my community and country. So I feel I have an obligation to empower other young girls and women like me to emerge.”
To mark the 25th anniversary of the adoption of the UN Declaration on human rights defenders in 1998, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders, Mary Lawlor, will focus on successes achieved by human rights defenders in her upcoming thematic report to the Human Rights Council. The report will demonstrate how the work of defenders is crucial in helping achieve more just and equitable societies.
This side event, which is co-sponsored by a number of States and organisations, including ISHR, will take place a day before the Special Rapporteur’s presentation of the report to the Human Rights Council and in addition to the Special Rapporteur herself, the panel will include a State representative who will outline how that State collaborated with defenders to bring about human rights gains. It will also include two defenders who will speak about successes they have achieved.
Speakers:
Mary Lawlor, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of Human Rights Defenders
Gustavo Gallon, Permanent Representative of Colombia to the United Nations Office at Geneva
Tara Houska, US-based citizen of Couchiching First Nation, Environmental & Indigenous rights defender
Daniel Goinic, Human Rights Program Director at Legal Resources Centre in Moldova
Moderator: Imogen Foulkes, BBC Correspondent in Geneva
Due to space limitation, registration is mandatory to attend the event in-person: please click here to register.
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 