Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards

Women human rights and environmental defenders face escalating repression simply because of their gender and need stronger international protections to continue their work, Right Livelihood Laureates warned at a United Nations side event last week.

The event, organised by Right Livelihood as part of the Women Laureates Hub and Exile Project programmes during the 62nd session of the UN Human Rights Council, brought together Laureates and international experts to examine the specific threats and challenges faced by women activists solely because of their gender.

“Gender apartheid” in Afghanistan

“Human rights defenders in general are the core or the most important element of a democratic society,” said Dr Sima Samar, a 2012 Laureate and former Minister for Women’s Affairs of Afghanistan. “Among them, women human rights defenders are the main ingredient of democracy. We cannot say that ‘There’s democracy, but women should be at home,’ like the Taliban does in Afghanistan.” In her country, a total of 160 laws, decrees and orders have been passed to suppress women’s rights. Those include a ban on women working outside the home and on girls receiving an education beyond 6th grade.

“It is a crime against humanity – that is why we call it gender apartheid,” Samar said, calling for the codification of gender apartheid in the Convention on Crimes Against Humanity. She also warned that some European countries are beginning to normalise the Taliban’s restrictions by framing them as cultural or religious practices. “It’s not our religion, it’s not our culture,” Samar said. “Please, do not use the excuse of respecting the culture and religion in Afghanistan.”

Women environmental defenders also face heightened risks compared to their male counterparts, warned Diana Nabiruma, Programmes and Communications Manager at 2022 Laureate organisation Africa Institute for Energy Governance (AFIEGO).

“In Uganda today, unfortunately, what we see is that laws are used to repress not only environmental and human rights defenders but women in particular,” Nabiruma said. Uganda currently has five laws restricting civic freedoms and activist work, including a recently passed law on foreign funding.

Nabiruma has observed stark differences in how men and women environmental defenders are treated, especially by authorities. “Women do not speak up; women are more repressed than men are,” she said. “When they protest, they are asked, ‘Who will marry you? You’re a terrible person!’ There’s a lot of anti-gender rhetoric, which forces women to become silenced, so they don’t demand their rights to be protected.”

A “problem for democracy,” not just for women

Eva Zillen, Senior Adviser at the Kvinna till Kvinna Foundation, a Swedish organisation that received the 2002 Right Livelihood Award, said that their 2026 report on the situation of women and queer rights activists in conflict-affected countries confirmed many of the trends her fellow Laureates were witnessing on the ground. One striking finding: for the first time since 2008, fewer activists reported feeling threatened. This isn’t progress, the organisation said, just an indication that digital hate speech has become so normalised that it’s no longer recognised as a threat. “A lot of activists are withdrawing: self-silencing has become a form of self-protection, and they are leaving social media,” Zillen said. “This is not a problem for the women’s movement; this is a problem for democracy.”

The report identified governments and state authorities as the leading source of threats against women human rights defenders, alongside traditional and community leaders, religious actors and anti-gender movements. “These four are working together, and they are using the anti-gender narrative,” Zillen said. “It has to do with gaining power or sustaining power, and this is a narrative that has proven to be very successful.”

Olivia Ekobe, Human Rights Officer at the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), said her organisation documented over 60 cases of women human rights defenders facing risks last year alone, underscoring the need for gender-sensitive monitoring.

Ekobe outlined three recommendations: civil society organisations must increase visibility around the criminalisation of women human rights defenders and the protections available to them; states must end this criminalisation and adopt adequate legal frameworks; and donors must increase funding for women-led local organisations. “We have a responsibility to help create an environment where women HRDs can carry out their work without fear,” she added.

The side event was held as the culmination of a week-long workshop in Geneva for women Right Livelihood Laureates and fellows of the Exile Project, a programme in collaboration with the Global Campus of Human Rights. 

In a meeting with diplomats, the participants of the workshop presented a briefing to states on how to improve protections for women human rights defenders. In the document, the participants highlighted the “strikingly similar patterns of repression” across political, legal and cultural contexts.

The recommendations include practical actions that states can take to protect women human rights defenders and provide guidance on how to engage with other states on the matter.