Azin Mohajerin and Hina Jilal at OMCT’s offices on International Women’s Day, 8 March 2023. (Geneva Solutions/Michelle Langrand)
Michelle Langrand in Geneva Solutions of 10 March 2023 speaks with two human rights defenders, from Iran and Pakistan.
Iran’s crackdown on women’s rights protests that erupted in September and the Taliban recently banning women from working in NGOs or from attending university have served as a reminder of how fast women’s rights are sliding back in the region and other parts of the world. But despite widespread arrests, allegations of torture and the execution of four protesters in Iran, the women-led movement refuses to back down. For Azin Mohajerin, 36, it means that change is a little more within grasp. Mohajerin left Iran in 2010, following the wave of post-electoral protests that swept the country.
This time around she is supporting rights campaigners in the country, specifically from minority groups, through Miaan, an NGO in Texas she co-founded in 2019 and where she works as senior human rights officer.
Hina Jilani, an advocate of Pakistan’s Supreme Court and president of the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), who fought against sharia laws in Pakistan back in the 80s, views it as another illustration of women’s resistance on the path to obtaining change.
Mohajerin and Jilani were in Geneva for international women’s day for an event organised by OMCT. Geneva Solutions spoke to the activists about the challenges women face in their countries and the lessons they can draw from each other.
Born in Lahore, the capital of Pakistan’s Punjab region, Hina Jilani grew up hearing about courtrooms and prisons. At that time, Pakistan was under martial law and her father’s political opposition would often land him into trouble. Rather than being traumatised, Jilani was empowered by the environment in which she was raised. Later in life as a lawyer, her work would also land her in those same courtrooms and prisons. Jilani passed the bar exam in 1977, the same year Sharia law was imposed on Pakistan. One of the new laws made adultery a crime against the state. See also: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/laureates/705AB196-BD5E-4EC2-B6C1-96AC5DDB353E .“While now Pakistan has a fit and reasonably good, protective legal framework for women, we have not gotten rid of the notorious practices like child marriage or honour killings. Gender-based violence is one of our biggest issues in Pakistan,” she pointed out. Pakistan reported around 63,000 cases of gender-based violence in the past three years according to Pakistan’s National Commission of Human Rights.
In Iran, the women-led movement for the freedom to choose what they wear and what to do with their bodies has been shaking the country for the past few months. But observers are cautious about the chances of the current uprising spurring real change in Iran as previous ones have failed to do so. Mohajerin, who cannot return to her country because of the sensitive nature of her work, sees it as one more step in the long path towards the respect of human rights.
The protests in Iran have brought out Iran’s ethnic minorities to march along with the Persian majority. Mahsa Amini, whose death in custody of the morality police last September triggered mass unrest, was a 22-year-old Kurdish woman from Saqqez, in the Kurdistan province of Iran.
Mohajerin, who works with minority groups in Iran, sees that cultural change has seeped into some of the most conservative communities. “Women in Balochistan bravely went to the street in one of the rare moments that they have spoken up about their rights,” said Mohajerin.“There is a recognition that there is a gap that needs to be filled in terms of ethnic equality and gender equality.”
But Iran has also come down hard on these groups. “After Tehran, the top places in terms of arrests were minority populated areas: the Kurdish area, the Turkic and then Balochistan,” said Mohajerin. Many of them remain behind bars, she said.
“Culture can help people to break the chains,” said Jilani. “Not everything is because of what the leadership or the ruling elite do. Unfortunately, the ruling elite act in a certain manner because that is the national psyche.”
Mohajerin noted that Iranians have been fighting for their freedom for a long time now. “It’s not a new movement, it is not something that started in September or even last year. It has been a long-lasting fight,” said Mohajerin.
She recalled when women first marched against the mandatory hijab after it was introduced by the Islamic revolution in Iran 44 years ago. “In Iran, the woman cannot have custody of the child after a certain age and they don’t have the right to divorce. But they do not just give up and say okay, this is how we should live. They’ve been fighting to get their rights and finding loopholes in the system,” she said.
“The cultural change that has been achieved during the past decades is way more significant than the law that exists,” said Mohajerin.
The situation in Iran has drawn international outcry, with western powers condemning Iran’s violent response to the protests. Like many activists, Jilani and Mohajerin see international solidarity as essential to their causes.
“Voices from the outside can help when the environment inside the country is very difficult,” said Jilani. “I’m alive today because of international public opinion and the pressure of the international community,” said Jilani. She recalls former US president Jimmy Carter and former president of Ireland Mary Robinson pleading for her release from prison at one time.So many world leaders sent letters to Pakistan, protesting against my incarceration, that when they released me they showed me this thick file and said we don’t know why people around the world are so worried about you.”
When Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian was in Geneva last week to speak before the Human Rights Council, campaigners called for diplomats to stage a walkout during his speech. Mohajerin recognised it as a “significant symbolic gesture to condemn the human rights abuses in Iran”. “However, it is crucial for the international community to engage in dialogue with the Iranian government regarding human rights violations, particularly in cases of executions, at the highest level,” she added.
But both Jilani and Mohajerin are adamant about something: change has to come from within. “The voice should come from the people inside the country. They are the ones who live in the country, and they are the ones who have to decide for their future,” said Mohajerin, noting that views within her country are not a monolith.
UN secretary general Antonio Guterres with Chinese president Xi Jinping during an official visit to Geneva on 18 January 2017. (UN Photo/Jean-Marc Ferré)
In parallel, ISHR hosted a panel discussion on the topic with former member of the UN Committee against Torture (CAT) Felice Gaer, William Nee of the Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders, Peter Irwin from the Uyghur Human Rights Project, and ISHR’s Director of Treaty Body advocacy, Vincent Ploton. ISHR Programme Director Sarah Brooks moderated the discussions.
“The incidents recounted, while qualitative in nature, provide compelling evidence of China’s ability to effectively and unrelentingly restrict civil society engagement with [UN treaty bodies] in the context of specific reviews, and deter independent sources from speaking up,” the report states.
The report adds to growing suspicion of Beijing’s sway over the UN human rights office, after it led a successful campaign last year to delay for months the publication of a report concluding that mass detention of Uyghurs and other religious minorities in Xinjiang could amount to crimes against humanity.
“When treaty bodies do their work well, they document violations and that can lead to serious actions such as the establishment of commissions of inquiry at the Human Rights Council, or even refereeing situations to the International Criminal Court, which can then lead up to indictment of national leaders or heads of state,” Vincent Ploton, co-author of the report, told Geneva Solutions. “So the consequences can be far reaching.”
China, which is party to six out of the ten treaties, has consistently sponsored candidates that have previously worked for the government and that work in institutions or organisations with close ties to the government, Sarah Brooks, co-author of the report, explained. At least one of them, Xia Jie currently sitting in the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), has formal ties to the Chinese communist party.
The authors recount how in 2015 during China’s evaluation by the Committee Against Torture (CAT), the Chinese committee member was kicked out by the chair for taking photos of the activists present, an intimidation tactic that China but also other countries have been known to use against campaigners who come to Geneva.
Seven Chinese activists were also reportedly prevented from travelling to Geneva to participate in the evaluation through threats and even detention. Felice Gaer, CAT chair at that time, recalled the event at a panel organised to launch the report.
This “creates a chilling effect”, leading “those who might be facing particular risks of reprisals to walk back their interest in participating in the process”, Brooks told Geneva Solutions.
The Chinese government has particularly targeted Uyghur and Tibetan groups, telling the office not to publish their reports on the UN human rights website under the pretext that they are “splitists” and therefore their input is misinformation, Gaer recalled at the panel. See also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2022/09/01/finally-the-long-awaited-un-report-on-china/
Ploton said this external pressure exerted on UN staff is even “more worrying”, but said. At the same time, reports submitted by what civil society groups call Gongos, meaning government organised NGOs, that pose as civil society while promoting state interests, have been flooding the reviews, making it hard for the experts to know which sources to trust.
Speaking at the panel, William Nee of the Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders warned that avenues for expression in China, from press to social media to academia, had been closing in recent years, making the UN system all the more important for Chinese rights activists.
China is set to be evaluated by the Committee on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights (CESCR) in February, followed by the CEDAW in May.
In an email response to Geneva Solutions, the Chinese permanent mission to the UN in Geneva rejected the report, calling the accusations “groundless and unjustified”.s
China is far from being the only country trying to influence the treaty bodies. The report also mentions Saudi Arabia and Russia. An analysis by the Geneva Academy from 2018 found that 44 per cent of treaty body expert members had experience working for the executive branch in their respective countries, as opposed to independent civil society groups or academia.
Ploton explained that this was allowed by countries practising “horse trading”, meaning that they agree to vote for a candidate in exchange for a vote for theirs.
Treaty bodies members adopted in 2012 the Addis Ababa guidelines, which spell out what independence and impartiality means for them, but the authors say Geneva Academy’s findings show there has been little progress since then. A major review of the treaty bodies system took place in 2020 for which civil society “had high hopes”, Ploton said. But in the end, “the process was a failure”, he said, describing the issue of reforming treaty bodies as a “hot potato” no state or UN official wanted to hold. “This is not a new phenomenon,” he said. “What is unique about China is how systematic it is.”
China has also been pushing for reforms to keep the expert groups in check, for example keeping them from doing follow-ups after a review or even banning NGOs that are not accredited by the UN Economic and Social Council, which had been blocking for years certain NGOs from being approved until recently.
A few countries including the Nordics and the United Kingdom have taken steps of their own to make sure that candidates are independent. “But the number of countries that take the process seriously is too narrow,” Ploton said.
The ISHR calls in the report for the creation of an independent vetting process, in the image of the International Criminal Court and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which have independent expert panels to monitor member elections. Both were NGO-led initiatives, as were the treaty bodies, Ploton said. “Perhaps it’s on us to make that change happen,” he added.
Michelle Langrand wrote in Geneva Solutions of 20 July 2022 that the “Michel Forst was elected special rapporteur for environmental defenders in June by the Aarhus Convention on environmental information.”
The newly appointed special rapporteur on environmental defenders Michel Forst will be able to intervene when environmentalists in the pan-European region are at risk of being attacked or penalised.
Defending the planet’s health can be a dangerous line of work – at times deadly. Two thirds of defenders murdered worldwide are environmental advocates, with 227 killings reported in 2020. While attacks in Europe and Central Asia are not as frequent as in other parts of the world, industries and governments publicly exposed for polluting or turning a blind eye to environmental crimes have been known to retaliate with harassment, legal action and even violence.
Environmental defenders in Ukraine documenting the impacts of the war or campaigners in Switzerland practising civil disobedience to alert the public about the climate threat can now turn to a UN expert to rapidly intervene on their behalf.
The French 71-year-old was UN special rapporteur on human rights defenders from 2014 to 2020.
Forst’s plans for the next four years are still being concocted. “It’s a very new mandate,” he told Geneva Solutions. To develop the tools and mechanisms he’ll be using throughout his term, he won’t have to look very far.
“I’ll be looking at how the working methods developed by the Office of High Commissioner of Human Rights could be implemented in this mandate, for instance, receiving complaints, sending communications to states when we know that rights have been violated and issuing public statements as well,” he said.
The complaints system will be one of Forst’s flagship measures and a chance to take it one step further. When UN experts under the Human Rights Council receive a complaint and write to a state asking for an explanation, the government has 60 days to reply, rendering it ineffective when a person’s life or security is at risk, he noted.
“We need to understand how it could be made effective because rapid response means that the special rapporteur has the possibility to intervene immediately by different means.”
The expert will also resort to what he calls “quiet diplomacy”, meeting with ambassadors both in Geneva and abroad, where there might be “systemic attacks against defenders”.s
Forst was elected by consensus by the parties to the Aarhus convention – an encouraging start for the expert. But not all governments will be easy to approach when they’re the ones in the hot seat. The most notable one is Belarus, sanctioned last year by fellow party members for closing down an anti-nuclear NGO that was collaborating with an expert body of the Convention. The country has deployed one of the most severe crackdowns in recent years in the region against civil society, and is on Forst’s to-do list. The country did not support the idea of creating a mechanism in the beginning, according to observers, although it did not oppose the proposal during the formal adoption last year. Last week, it was a no-show for the French expert’s nomination.
“Belarus is one of the last countries that I visited as special rapporteur on human rights defenders and on that occasion I met with a number of environmental defenders. I also had lengthy discussions with both the minister for foreign affairs and the minister of justice about the cases and to look at how my mandate at that time could help support government efforts to convict the perpetrators of attacks against defenders,” he said.
“Security forces employed by companies are the main perpetrators against environmental defenders. Part of the mandate is not only to speak to states, but also to companies and to draw attention to them, and to the countries in which they have their seat, over cases of maladministration, corruption or acts against defenders,” Forst said.
His efforts could add pressure on European countries to toughen corporate responsibility laws that could help protect defenders in countries beyond the convention’s jurisdiction. Within the country borders of the agreement, campaigners would also like to see Forst tackle legal abuses against environmental defenders that fall in a grey zone.
Yves Lador, Geneva representative for EarthJustice, told Geneva Solutions: “We see a worrying trend in democratic countries of targeting environmental activists directly through laws through different levels.
Anuja Pathak was in Guatemala for a year, escorting threatened rights activists for International Peace Brigades. (Credit: Geneva Solutions/ML)
Michelle Langrand in Geneva Solutions of 1 July 2022 did a lengthy portrait of Anuja Pathak, the 27-year-old who had just returned from spending one year in Guatemala as an international observer for Peace Brigades International (PBI). The NGO provides protection to threatened human rights defenders in different Latin American countries and other regions by stationing volunteers whose presence is meant to discourage attacks. See also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2021/01/04/we-start-2021-with-a-long-read-about-non-violence-and-pbi/
Along with other young volunteers, Pathak was sent to Guatemala to accompany indigenous and peasant rights groups persecuted for resisting mining, hydroelectric and farming projects in their lands. The Central American region, and particularly Guatemala carry a history of violent repression against land rights defenders. In 2020, the country ranked seventh worldwide in killings of environmental activists, according to the NGO Global Witness.
Pathak and her colleagues were based in Guatemala City, the national capital, and would oversee several organisations. Most of them were a six or eight hours ride away in the rural regions of Verapaces. The volunteers would make weekly visits and were on call 24/7 in case they were contacted by one of the NGOs.
“I’m a light sleeper,” Pathak says, in between laughs. Taking a more serious tone, she tells of the emergencies that they’re expected to handle citing the example of the Association of Neighbours of Chicoyogüito, Alta Verapaz (AVECHAV) – an organisation that she grew fond of.
Massacred and kicked out of their lands by the army in the 1980s, the group is still fighting to recover their territory. One night, the volunteers got a call, Pathak remembers.
“Members of AVECHAV had tried to take over one piece of land, and they had been arrested and taken into custody for trespassing, including children,” she explains.
“It’s a complex situation because we don’t support the fact that they trespassed, but we have to make sure that their rights are respected.”
The volunteers then call the police to obtain information and activate their network of organisations and embassies in order to raise the alarm, all in the hopes that international attention will deter authorities from abusing those in custody.
In the remote rural areas where these rights groups are based, impunity is rampant and criminalisation of human rights defenders has been institutionalised. One of the other organisations PBI supports, the Peasant Committee of Altiplano (PCA), has over 300 members with arrest warrants on them and seven in prison, according to their own figures. The Q’eqchi’ indigenous group has been in a land dispute with the government and business landowners for over 100 years.
Imelda Teyul, leader of PCA, gave a chilling account last month in Geneva about the harassment and abuse she and other members went through when they visited their imprisoned colleagues.
Pathak’s job was to accompany some of the defendants during their trials. “A lot of times you go to court, and you just wait for hours. I think I went to more court hearings that were postponed than those that went through. It’s part of the process of criminalisation in order to cause frustration,” she says, sharing the feeling.
In recent years, Guatemala has passed increasingly restrictive laws against civil society. The latest, the law of NGOs, gives the government the power to shut down any organisation that uses external funds to “alter public order”.
“It’s obviously a law that seeks to restrain the work of organisations,” Pathak stresses. It has also made it harder for organisations like PBI. Set up in the 1980s and inspired by Gandhi’s non-violence movement, PBI follows a non-partisan approach and abstains from making public statements.
“We would take measures in order to mitigate these risks, for example, by being very careful to always present clearly the work of PBI to avoid confusions.”
Questioning international aid
Brought up in Birmingham by Swiss and Indian parents, Pathak was drawn to the world of international aid. Before going to Guatemala, she worked in Tunisia, Lebanon and Palestine with refugee and minority rights organisations. She had also volunteered in refugee camps in Calais and Greece.
“In the jungle refugee camp, there was a massive feeling of community, and people supported each other, whereas other camps organised by the UN or other international organisations have a different feeling,” she says.
Through her different experiences, Pathak found herself interested in grassroot organisations, the topic of her bachelor’s degree thesis from the University of Leeds, and questioning the role of big international organisations in conflict-affected zones.
“The field of international development is crazy in the sense that we have countries supporting other countries, while also causing issues in those countries. It is ultimately based on racism and unequal wealth distribution. I was curious to understand how international organisations could change those power dynamics, rather than exacerbate them,” she reflects.
In Guatemala, Pathak got to experience a more horizontal approach, where the international organisation is only there to support local actors. “What will I take from this experience is the importance of a collaborative approach with different organisations and embassies and how that’s the only way to make changes,” she says.
The conflict in Ukraine with all these absurd symbols (Vladimir Kazanevsky for Nebelspalter)
Ukrainian Vladimir Kazanevsky and Hungarian Gabor Papai were announced as the winners of the Kofi Annan Courage in Cartooning Award at a ceremony at the Maison de la Paix in Geneva and presented by the Freedom Cartoonists Foundation. Jury : Kenneth Roth, Human Rights Watch (president), Sami Kanaan, City of Geneva and cartoonists Ann Telnaes (USA), Kak (France) and Chappatte (Switzerland). The portraits below were done by True Heroes Films (THF)
Vladimir Kazanevsky
Vladimir Kazanevsky, Ukraine’s leading cartoonist, was working in his studio early in the morning of 24 February when he heard loud explosions near the airport in Kyiv. He and his wife fled to western Ukraine, along with a huge wave of families fleeing the bombings. From there they went to Presov, a town in Slovakia with a community of artists.
Deprived of his drawing materials, catalogues and books, which he had to leave behind in Kyiv, Kazanevsky continues to draw relentlessly: Putin in action, on a tank or on the bow of the Titanic. “Autocrats and dictators are afraid of our cartoons, and they are right, because our drawings are powerful weapons,” he says.
Fiercely determined to continue the fight against Russian aggression, the 71-year-old sees his work as an act of resistance. An act of defence of freedom of expression against war propaganda.
Gábor Pápai
For several years, Hungarian cartoonist Gàbor Pàpai and his newspaper Népszava – the only opposition daily still alive in Budapest – have been the subject of attacks and legal proceedings by the authorities – even though Hungary is part of the European Union.
This cartoon, “The Chronicle” by Gábor Pápai, published in Hungary’s daily newspaper Népszava on 28 April shows the Hungarian National Public Health Centre’s chief doctor looking at Jesus on the cross and suggesting that many people who had deceased from the coronavirus had already been likely to die because they had suffered from pre-existing conditions.
It was intended to ridicule Hungary’s chief health figure for having tried to minimise the number of deaths solely attributable to the coronavirus in Hungary and, by extension, to mock the government’s handling of the crisis.
“Its depiction and use of Jesus on a cross sparked an outcry from the representatives of the Christian Democrat Party, an ally of the ruling Fidesz, to the point that the Secretary of State for persecuted Christian communities, Tristan Azbej, accused Gábor Pápai of blasphemy and threatened to sue him or Népszava,” as Reporters Without Borders, who came to the defense of Papai, explains.
The Catholic religion, the fight against Covid or simply Hungarian history are all pretexts for prosecution in a country ranked 92nd in the world press freedom index by Reporters Without Borders (RSF). This shameful ranking has been deteriorating ever since Viktor Orbán became Prime Minister, putting all independent media in great difficulty. Some, like Népszava, are directly threatened with extinction. Gàbor Pàpai, far from being intimidated, continues to critically observe and draw all political actors in Hungary.
On the 20th anniversary of Guantanamo Bay Kasmira Jefford of Geneva Solutions looks at the legacy of the so-called “war on terror”. She does so in conversation with UN special rapporteur Fionnuala Ní Aoláin on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism. From camps in north-eastern Syria, where thousands are detained without legal processes, to China where detention camps are posing under the guise of “education facilities” – secret detentions and enforced disappearances are still happening every day under the banner countering terrorism. Here some lengthy extracts:
In 2010, UN experts from four different working groups and special procedures joined forces to produce one of the most comprehensive studies to date on widespread systematic torture, enforced disappearances, arbitrary detention and secret detentions taking place across the world and condemning the wide range of human rights violations committed by countries.
In a follow-up report presented on Wednesday at the Human Rights Council 49th session, the special rapporteur said 10 years on, these practices are still rife and deplored the “abject failure” by states to implement the recommendations of the 2010 study.
GS News: In 2010, UN experts published a milestone study on secret detentions. What does your follow-up report show?
Fionnuala Ni Aolain: The 2010 report was unusual because it involved… four special procedure mechanisms coming together and identifying each in their collective way the scale of the problem of systematic torture and rendition of persons across borders, and systematic disappearances, arbitrary detention, and secret detentions. The [follow-up] report we’ve just published does a stock-taking and assesses whether or not the recommendations of the special experts were implemented. And possibly the single most depressing thing about that review is that the annex lists every single person who was named in the 2010 report – hundreds of names who were rendered, tortured, or both – and not a single individual received an adequate remedy [for the violation of human rights they experiend]. There was no accountability, no person was ever charged with crime for any of those acts.
The second part of the follow up report focuses on what that culture of impunity enabled. And what I find is that the culture of impunity, fostered and enabled by the “war on terror” as it was called essentially has created and enabled the conditions in which other places of mass detention have emerged. The report focuses on two of them : Xinjiang, China, and the situation in [in detention camps] in northeast Syria.
One of the observations you make is that ‘secret’ detention has evolved in the past two decades to encompass more complex forms of “formally lawful” or legalised transfer. Can you explain?
In the evolution that we’ve seen…dark-of-night arrivals into places like Poland and Lithuania and other countries that were accepting these rendition flights stopped because the global heat, if you want, on that kind of rendition was simply too high. It just became intolerable and unacceptable for states who were cooperating in enabling torture and rendition to continue to do it. But there’s been this transition into this ‘lawful transfer’. These are diplomatic assurances, [for example], where one state offers an assurance to another state that they will not torture the person who’s transferred into their custody.
But as the report makes clear, if you have to provide an assurance that you’re not going to do that, it tells you that there’s something fundamentally dysfunctional about the legal system that’s producing the assurance – and there’s a fundamental question about the trustworthiness of the assurance if it happens. And what we know in practice is that so many of those assurances are not worth the paper they are written on. People have had the worst kinds of practices meted out to them under the cover of diplomatic assurance. And there have been no consequences for states in breaking those assurances.
One of the issues you raise in the report is the lack of a globally agreed definition on terrorism or acts of terrorism. Why has it been so complex to agree upon a definition?
Part of what happened is that 9/11 spawned this culture where everybody agree that terrorism was a bad thing but nobody ever defined it. …What we see in practice is the systemic abuse of counterterrorism across the globe. We see it in multiple countries. Over 67 per cent of all the communications the mandate has sent since 2005 have involved the use of a counterterrorism measure against a civil society actor. So this tells you that actually, they’re doing really bad counterterrorism.
We have to understand that, in fact, there’s a structural endemic problem. And in many countries, states’ security is governed by counterterrorism. The example I often use is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, when women’s rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul was jailed on terrorism charges and processed through a Special Criminal Court. So this shows terrorism being everything and nothing.
…….
In your annual report presented to the General Assembly in October last year, you said that efforts to improve counter terrorism measures are in fact damaging human rights. Would you say that counterterrorism is incompatible with the respect of human rights?
Security is a human right. It’s found in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights. Our most fundamental right that enables us to have other rights is the right to be secure. So I don’t think they’re incompatible and I don’t think the drafters of the Universal Declaration thought they were incompatible. I grew up in Northern Ireland in a society which was, in many ways, defined for decades by counterterrorism law. The problem is that expansive counterterrorism law, which is what we have, is imprecise – and vague counterterrorism law is fundamentally incompatible with the rule of law.
The fundamental idea contained in the rule of law is that if you are to be charged with an offence by the state, that you know precisely what acts you engaged in that are likely to make you subject to the course of power of the state. And the fundamental problem with terrorism is that it really, in so many countries, kind of injures that the concept of the rule of law, because it’s not precise. A reasonable individual could not know what kind of actions they would engage in would implicate the use of a state or measure against them. So I don’t think it’s incompatible but unfortunately, we have very few examples of good practice.
One of the key examples you highlight in your report are the camps in northeast Syria where thousands of people – the majority women and children – are being detained. You describe this as “a human rights black hole”. What can or should be done immediately for these people who are living in desperate situations?
You have thousands, almost over 60,000 men and women being held in detention centres, prisons, who have never been through any legal process; the idea that we would hold people in these conditions is simply abhorrent. And then we turn to look at the conditions in those camps. The special rapporteur on torture and I have found that the conditions in the camps reach the threshold of torture, inhumane, and degrading treatment under international law. So the fact that they are there is also unacceptable. But the bottom line is that we have states, mostly western states, who simply will not take back their nationals including children, who refuse.
So, there’s a large-scale political solution that’s required to fix the challenge in northeast Syria, which involves all of the significant parties to the conflict. However, in the short run, the only international law compliance solution to the situation in these camps is the return of women and children to their countries of nationality. We have some states who have made active and ongoing efforts to do so and some who have made no effort.
MSF worked in collaboration with Sea-Watch on board the Sea-Watch 4 until February 2021, providing medical care and supporting with humanitarian assistance for rescued people. (Credit: Médecins Sans Frontières)
As countries across Europe adopt increasingly tough migration policies, NGOs are being prosecuted for acts of solidarity with refugees, asylum seekers and migrants. We speak to Stephen Cornish, director general of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Switzerland, and Behrouz Boochani, a Kurdish Iranian journalist and author who was imprisoned in Australia’s offshore asylum system for six years, about the threat this growing hostility poses to Europe’s democracies.
On 4 March 2021, Italian prosecutors charged dozens of people from humanitarian organisations including Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and Save the Children with colluding with people smugglers while carrying out rescue operations in the Mediterranean. After an investigation spanning nearly four years, crew members, mission heads and legal representatives who saved thousands of people from drowning at sea are facing years in prison, sending shockwaves through the humanitarian community. See also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2020/03/04/new-amnesty-report-on-human-rights-defenders-helping-migrants/
“It’s hard to imagine how saving a life can become a criminalised activity,” says Stephen Cornish, director of MSF Suisse, speaking to Geneva Solutions. The organisation, which denies the accusations, estimates that its six humanitarian ships helped save more than 81,000 lives at sea. “It would be like criminalising the fire department for going to put out a fire.”
The investigation is one of dozens brought against NGOs running search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean since 2016, when a handful of humanitarian organisations including MSF and SOS Mediteranee launched vessels in response to a rise in the number of people attempting the perilous journey from countries such as Libya and Turkey to claim asylum in Europe. Over the past few years, these vessels have been frequently detained by authorities or trapped at sea for weeks at a time, refused entry to ports where they can safely disembark. [see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2019/12/18/international-migrants-day-the-story-of-the-ocean-viking/]
Hostility towards rescue agencies has grown since the height of the so-called ‘refugee crisis’ in 2015, says Cornish, when over one million people – the majority of whom were refugees fleeing the war in Syria – fled to Europe by sea over the course of the year, mainly arriving in Greece and Italy. The EU’s failure to share responsibility for the dramatic rise in the number of people seeking asylum in Europe left countries such as Greece and Italy overwhelmed, Cornish says: “People initially responded with charity and welcome, but then the failure was at a government level not to share the responsibility, and to repopulate people across different states.”
As anti-refugee politics became increasingly mainstream across Europe, countries began to tighten their borders and scrabble for ways to reduce ‘irregular’ migration into the bloc. Last week marked five years since the introduction of the EU-Turkey Deal – a key pillar of these efforts. The agreement called on Turkey to prevent asylum seekers and migrants from reaching the EU in exchange for financial assistance and the promise of the eventual creation of legal resettlement pathways to Europe.
Five years on, Turkey hosts more refugees than any other country in the world, with the EU accused of outsourcing its migration management and turning a blind eye to the poor living conditions facing many refugees in the country. The agreement is also widely viewed as creating the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the Greek islands, which became a final destination for thousands of asylum seekers trapped in overcrowded camps waiting for their applications to be processed.
The inhumane conditions in refugee camps on the Greek islands are well documented, with reports of squalid facilities, violence, abuse and a lack of basic amenities commonplace. At times, there have been 40,000 people living in camps designed for a few thousand. As well as Syria, the majority of people are fleeing war and persecution in countries such as Afghanistan, Somalia, Palestine and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and one in four are children. The horrific fire that engulfed the notoriously overcrowded Moria camp on Lesvos in 2020, leaving 13,000 people without shelter, became a tragic symbol of Europe’s failed migration policy.
MSF has been operational on the Greek islands of Lesvos, Samos and Chios for many years, although it ceased operations inside Moria citing mass deportation and potential refoulement of asylum seekers and refugees. It no longer accepts EU funding in opposition to the policy.
“[The impact of the EU Turkey Deal] has been horrendous,” says Cornish. “There are still 15,000 people trapped in limbo, in no man’s land in Greece with no way forward and no way back, and suffering at the hands of supposed democracies.”
“We see suicides, we see self-harm in children, we see long term PTSD and people with no hope, no ability to move forward or backward, trapped in punishment,” he says. “We put people in hell holes, and then when hell breaks loose, we pretend like we don’t see it.”
The deal has recently been extended until 2022, when the EU’s New Pact on Migration and Asylum is expected to come into force. The New Pact focuses on fast-tracking screening and asylum processes at Europe’s external borders and includes a system of “mandatory solidarity” by which member states do not have to commit to resettling refugees but can instead fund repatriation. It has been widely criticised by humanitarian organisations for repeating the mistakes of the EU-Turkey Deal and failing to improve the situation for asylum seekers and refugees.
“Everything we’ve seen that failed in the US and failed in Australia, and is failing in Greece and Italy, we’d like to now make more semi-permanent policy,” says Cornish of the New Pact, which is currently being negotiated by member states and in the European Parliament. “As we harden these policies, all we do is push people into the hands of traffickers. We push them to take riskier routes and have higher death tolls and greater suffering.”
While the number of asylum seekers and migrants crossing the Mediterranean has decreased dramatically since 2015, migration has continued to be a highly politicised issue across Europe. Countries have adopted increasingly hostile policies which humanitarian organisations say fail to address flaws in existing systems, to the detriment of the people these systems were initially created to help.
Last week, the UK announced an overhaul of its asylum policy, which was met with outrage from humanitarian actors. Under the new plans, migrants and asylum seekers who arrive in the UK by routes deemed illegal will be indefinitely liable for removal even if they are granted asylum, creating a two-tier system which has been criticised as a violation of international law and eroding the right to asylum.
UK home secretary Priti Patel argues that current European policies “play into the hands of people smugglers”, however human rights and migration experts argue that, while governments fail to expand safe and legal routes, it is inhumane and unjust to punish asylum seekers for resorting to irregular routes when the only other option is an interminable wait in one of Europe’s refugee camps.
“Since a number of years [ago], we have made it almost impossible to be able to flee and request asylum from a conflict zone,” says Cornish. “We put all of these hurdles in place to make it impossible to be able to declare asylum and come [to Europe], and then we criminalise anybody jumping the line because we say they’re not following the procedures.”
Lessons from Australia. It has also been reported that asylum seekers in the UK could be shipped overseas while their asylum claim is pending – a policy that echoes Australia’s offshore processing asylum policy, instituted twice from 2001 to 2008 and 2012 to present.
Under the policy, asylum seekers and migrants who arrived in Australia by boat were immediately sent to offshore processing centres on the pacific islands of Manus and Nauru. The detention camps – which held over 2000 people at a time – have been widely condemned for systemic abuses and human rights violations. Although over 85 per cent of people sent to Nauru and Manus were recognised as refugees, the majority were left there for years awaiting resettlement.
Behrouz Boochani, a Kurdish Iranian refugee who was detained on Manus Island for six years after attempting to reach Australia by boat in 2013, experienced the horror of Australia’s inhumane asylum policy first-hand. He spoke to Geneva Solutions ahead of the FIFDH event he took part in alongside Stephen Cornish.
“The dangerous side is that Australia is introducing this policy to countries in Europe, especially the UK,” says Boochani, who continued his work as a journalist writing for publications such as the Guardian from Manus. “Australia became a model for many of these countries. And for many years, we were warning about this, we were talking about it, but no one heard us.” [See also: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/laureates/55687980-7bdc-11e9-8427-f3aebfb2928e]
“This policy damaged the political culture in Australia [and] the democracy in Australia,” says Boochani. “It damaged the principles in Australia and damaged morality in Australia. I think if the UK followed this policy, you cannot say that [you’ve] just damaged the refugees, you’ve damaged your principles, your democracy, your system, your morality, and your political culture too.”
MSF’s Cornish shares Boochani’s concern that Europe’s asylum policies are damaging the democracy and social fabric of countries, partly fuelling the rise in far-right politics that has gained traction across the continent in recent years.
There have also been reports of mounting deportations and systemic violent pushbacks at Europe’s external land borders by the EU border agency Frontex. At sea, NGOs have also collected evidence of refugees being intercepted and illegally pushed back to Turkey from Greek waters. International human rights and refugee law requires states to protect the right of people to seek asylum and protection from refoulement even if they enter irregularly. The increasingly frequent pushbacks have prompted calls by the UN Refugee Agency for an urgent investigation.
“Respecting human lives and refugee rights is not a choice, it’s a legal and moral obligation. While countries have the legitimate right to manage their borders in accordance with international law, they must also respect human rights. Pushbacks are simply illegal,” said UNHCR’s assistant commissioner for protection Gillian Triggs in a statement…
Sarah Noble in Geneva Solutions of 15 March 2021 writes about her encounter with five young women activists from around the world who shared their motivation, their pandemic experiences, and advice for future generations:
On International Women’s Day, I was privileged to moderate the conversation, at an event hosted by the EU mission to the UN in Geneva and UN Women. I came away convinced world leaders could learn a lesson or two. They aren’t waiting to be invited to the decision-making table, and are already driving change in their communities and beyond.
The solidarity among them encapsulates a global movement led by female youth, determined in their fight for gender equality, education, eradicating period poverty, and dealing with climate change.
“We do not have to wait for the adults to start campaigning for the action that we want to see,” said Amy Meek of the UK. Along with her younger sister Ella, Amy, 17, launched an award-winning campaign, now a charity, called Kids Against Plastic. The sisters (see picture) were motivated by realising the devastating impact the misuse of plastic was having on the planet and also its potential legacy for future generations.
“I grew up realising how much girls were taught to be weak, were taught to be submissive while boys are taught to be strong and to be leaders. For me it was really puzzling, ”said Yande Banda, a passionate 17-year-old feminist activist and education advocate from Zambia. Yande is the chairperson of Transform Education, a global youth-led coalition hosted by the UN, where she advocates for a gender transformative approach to education. “I began being an advocate and in particular a feminist, ever since I could realise the consequential inequalities within society – so I would say I was around six years old,” “The fight to end the climate crisis has not stopped for the pandemic and as feminist leaders, neither have we”.
İlayda Eskitaşcioğlu, 28, is a human rights lawyer and a PhD student at Koç University in İstanbul. She founded an NGO, We Need to Talk, in 2016, which aims to fight against period poverty and period stigma in Turkey. “Periods do not stop for pandemics! Neither does the fight for gender equality! We are still breaking taboos, step by step – fathers, brothers, romantic partners, co-workers, teachers, those that are not menstruating, period poverty is your problem too! ” We Need to Talk provides sanitary products to three vulnerable target groups: Seasonal agricultural workers, refugees and pre-teens who are going to school in remote rural areas, and tries to start an honest and open conversation around menstruation in the Middle East.
Lucija Tacer is the current UN youth delegate for Slovenia and an advocate for women’s rights. She has made gender equality the priority in her interventions at the world body. “I entered into a workplace where all of the partners and the high level people are men, except one or two women and 100 percent of the secretaries were female and just being in that environment every day really got me thinking, what is going on here ? ”
Julieta Martinez, 17, from Chile is the founder of the TREMENDAS Collaborative Platform, which promotes the empowerment of girls, and young people by putting their skills and talents at the service of the community.
“Amazingly talented girls are all around the world. We have to continue looking for them. We have to continue giving them a space. And we have to continue this fight to actually get to gender equality… Girls, young women and adolescents have the right to raise their voices, to be heard and to take action for their dignity, their integrity and to be agents of social change in a society where human and youth rights must always be defended. ”
Ales Bialiatski laying flowers at a memorial to Aliaksandr Taraikouski, a protester who was killed during a demonstration on August 10, 2020. Credit: HRC Viasna
On February 16, Ales Bialiatski’s home and the offices of his human rights organisation Viasna in Minsk were raided by police. He was targeted along with more than 40 other human rights defenders, journalists and their relative in towns across the country, with reports of officials using excessive force while seizing phones, computers and credit cards.
Bialiatski, one of Belarus’ most prominent human rights defenders, says the authorities were looking for any evidence of organisations or journalists “financing” peaceful protests against the country’s president Alexander Lukashenko. The raids are the latest development in the government’s brutal crackdown on mass protests which have been ongoing in the country since Lukashenko claimed victory in a rigged election last August. [see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/tag/ales-bialiatski/]
The authorities have recently opened a criminal case against Viasna and Bialiatski himself. A former political prisoner who spent nearly three years jailed in Minsk, he says that, by the time this article is published, he may once again be behind bars.
“Millions of people want change, and the answer of the government is repression,” says Bialiatski, speaking to Geneva Solutions from the Right Livelihood Foundation offices in Geneva. He and Viasna received the prestigious award in 2020.
Seven months on from the election, more than 33,000 people have been detained, and there are widespread reports of police brutality, arbitrary arrests, kidnapping, and torture of detainees.
The human rights situation in Belarus is, in Bialiatski’s words, “an absolute catastrophe”. “The situation is quite horrible because it’s not only human rights defenders that suffer,” he explains. “It’s all levels of society. Anybody who can think.”
Over half a year since the first protests broke out in the capital Minsk, he says the authorities are still tightening their grip on personal freedoms and carrying out grave human rights violations, targeting activists, journalists and anyone who opposes the regime. But the people of Belarus are not giving up.
What’s going on in Belarus? The government’s crackdown in Belarus follows mass protests in the country last summer after a fraudulent election in which Lukashenko, known as “Europe’s last dictator”, claimed to have won 80 per cent of the vote. The poll is widely accepted to have been rigged to extend his 25-year rule, prompting the largest demonstrations in the country’s history.
Elections in Belarus have never been considered free and fair by many international observers. Bialiatski has been working to advocate for democratic freedoms in the country since his early twenties, when the country was still under Soviet rule.
He founded Viasna in 1996, five years after Belarus gained independence from the Soviet Union and two years after Lukashenko came to power. The organisation’s initial aim was to help thousands of protesters arrested during mass pro-democracy rallies after Lukashenko brought in sweeping constitutional reforms that consolidated his authoritarian rule.
“[My colleagues and I] thought that this work would finish in a few years because the problem would disappear,” says Bialiatski. “But it’s been 25 years and there’s still work to do. It’s never ended. Unfortunately, the human rights situation never got better.”
Accusations of rigged elections, brutal suppression of civil rights and corruption have been hallmarks of Lukashenko’s half a century in power. However, Bialiatski says last year’s poll acted as a catalyst. It was then that Belarusian society finally “woke up” and demanded change.
Breaking the silence. In the run-up to elections in Belarus in 2020, a number of opposition figures became extremely popular, including former members of Lukashenko’s government and Sergei Tikhanovskya, a well-known blogger who travelled the country interviewing former loyal supporters of the ruler about why they had turned against him.
Although Lukashenko jailed or exiled many of his opponents, he did not see Sviatlana Tsikhanovskaya – who ran in the place of her husband when he was imprisoned – as a significant threat. However, Tsikhanovskaya became hugely popular, gaining the support of fellow opposition figures and attracting large crowds of supporters to her rallies.
Events in 2020 drastically impacted the Lukashenko’s loyal following and damaged his reputation. The country’s already dire economic situation was exacerbated by the Covid-19 crisis, which the ruler has fervently denied, refusing to bring in restrictions and joking that the virus could be fought with vodka and work in the country’s potato fields. “Lukashenko was laughing into the world’s face and denying the existence of the virus, while people all around were dying,” says Bialiatski.
Tsikhanovskaya was widely expected to win the vote in a landslide. Although independent polling is illegal in Belarus, making it difficult to measure her lead in the run up to the election, some independent exit polls conducted outside polling stations in foreign embassies on election day showed her to have received 79.69 per cent of the vote while Lukashenko received just 6.25 per cent.
When the government announced it had won 80 per cent of the vote, claiming that Tsikhanovskaya had received less than 10 per cent, Belarusians realised the election had been rigged. “It was an open lie in the face of the people,” says Bialiatski. “Of course there were rallies – nobody believed the result.”
“The very first mass protests on the street were a result of despair and disappointment and disagreement with this injustice that had happened in the country,” he adds.
Thousands of people took to the streets across the country to peacefully protest the result, but they were met with a brutal crackdown from authorities. In Minsk, which saw the worst of the violence, police and the army deployed water cannons, stun grenades and rounds of rubber bullets against protesters. Police vans were reportedly driven into crowds and hundreds were injured, with journalists and independent observers apparently targeted.
As reports circulated of extreme violence against protesters, including systematic torture of detainees by police and security forces, thousands more Belarusians rallied. Over 200,000 people took part in the largest protest in the country’s history, and there were hopes that the pressure may finally topple Lukashenko.
However, the result was an even more brutal crackdown, in which thousands were injured and arrested. “Unfortunately, the peaceful protests didn’t lead to a change of government as was hoped and expected,” says Bialiatski. “Instead, daily repressions started against different people at different layers of society, at different organisations and activists.”
Crackdown on human rights and freedom of speech. According to Viasna, over 2,300 criminal cases have been opened against human rights defenders and activists since the protests erupted in August 2020. In February alone, during the latest spate of arrests, a further 511 people were detained, 102 people received sentences and 49 people imprisoned.
There is currently a criminal case open against Viasna and Bialiatski himself for inciting “public disorder” through allegedly financing ongoing protests by paying the huge fines imposed on protesters. He says the latest raids in which police seized phones, laptops and credit cards were an attempt to collect evidence. “This is considered as financial proof against the regime,” he explains. “They are not allowing us to exercise our human rights protection work, which is our right.
“We are working all the time on the edge of the knife because [we] don’t know when this criminal case will take force and [we] will be sentenced for it,” he says.
It’s not just activists who are being targeted. According to Viasna, there are currently 258 political prisoners in the country, including journalists and bloggers. On 17 February, two journalists, Katsiaryna Andreyeva and Darya Chultsova, both of the Polish-funded Belsat TV channel, were convicted of violating public order and sentenced to two years in prison for covering the protests.
“They are looking for ‘criminals’ among those who help political prisoners and write about the struggle of Belarusians for freedom,” wrote Tsikhanovskaya on Twitter in response to the latest raids. Tsikhanovskaya was forced to flee to Lithuania following last year’s elections.
“But in search of criminals, they should look into the offices of the riot police, the GUBOPiK (interior ministry directorate) and all those responsible for the repression.”
A number of Bialiatski’s colleagues are incarcerated in the country’s jails, imprisoned for as little as sending food parcels to jailed protesters. A former political prisoner himself who spent nearly three years behind bars from 2011-2014, Bialitksi knows all too well how terrible the conditions in Belarus’ prisons can be. With widespread reports of detainees being tortured and subjected to brutal treatment, he says he’s deeply concerned for their welfare.
“How people are treated in Belarusian jails is not a humane way to treat people,” he says. “I really hope that my colleagues and my friends can survive it and I really hope that one day they will be released.”
Pressure from the international community. Last summer’s crackdown prompted western countries to impose sanctions on Minsk, but Lukashenko has refused to resign, bolstered by diplomatic and financial support from long-standing ally Russia. Tikhanovskaya, who remains in Lithuania after the country rejected the Belarusian authority’s request for her extradition, is leading a campaign to encourage external pressure on Belarus in the hope that tougher measures against the regime may succeed in toppling Lukashenko.
Her efforts could be paying off. In December, the EU imposed a third round of economic sanctions against key individuals and companies in Belarus, while in February the Biden administration expanded the list of senior officials in the country who are no longer welcome in the United States.
Tikhanovskaya has also created a Coordination Council, effectively a government in waiting, which is headed by Bialiatski. The council is drafting a new constitution and keeps in contact with key figures in Belarus to ensure that the exiled opposition does not become detached from those who are keeping up the pressure on Lukashenko from within.
The situation in Belarus is also being closely watched by the United Nations. Human Rights chief Michelle Bachelet recently presented her report on the aftermath of August’s elections to the 46th session of the Human Rights Council at the end of February. Bachelet warned of a “human rights crisis” in the country and called for an immediate end to the policy of systematic intimidation used by the Belarusian authorities against peaceful protesters and for the release of political prisoners.
Viasna has supported a number of other rights organisations including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch in calling on the Human Rights Council to establish a new mechanism on Belarus. Bialiatski explains that the situation in the country must be kept high up on the international agenda if there is any hope of bringing down Lukashenko’s regime.
“It is very important to continue to exercise international pressure on Belarus, pointing out that human rights have to be preserved in the country,” he says. “This help of international society is required today – not tomorrow, today. Because tomorrow it might be too late.”
Hope for the future. Bialiatski says it is impossible to predict what the coming weeks, and even days, will bring to the people of Belarus. He says the latest crackdown has had a “very, very intimating result. People are scared. ”
“One thing is for sure,” he continues. “The administrative and criminal charges, and punishments and sentences against the activists and human rights defenders will get harsher. This I can guarantee. The current power is continuing to tighten the screws.
“I ask myself often how long the people can continue to bear this pressure, and if they will continue to bear it much longer.”
There are hopes that the spring could bring another wave of protests in Belarus. Speaking during a trip to Finland last week, exiled opposition leader Tikhanovskaya said she expected mass protest against Lukashenko to start up again soon after a lull in public demonstrations due to the authorities brutal suppression.
Bialiatski shares some of her cautious optimism. “The crisis has not gone, we are not beyond it,” he says. “The disagreement, disapproval and unhappiness of the people is so strong that I think there will be another breakout soon.”
He says that it is only a matter of time before Lukashenko loses his grip on Belarus – be it a result of peaceful protests, international pressure or the deteriorating economic situation in the country, although most likely a combination of all three. “This is the first time we have clearly seen that the current regime is in the minority and this gives us a significant certainty that the regime, the current power, cannot stay much longer,” he says.
After spending most of his life tirelessly working to uphold human rights in the face of relentless persecution at the hands of the Belarusian authorities, Bialiatski has managed to retain faith that his country will one day become a free democracy. What gives him hope that this could finally be the turning point in Belarus’s history? The country’s young people, he says, who have led the movement against Lukashenko.
“These young people in Belarus who strive for a change have totally different values to Lukashenko and his entourage,” he says. “And it’s difficult to change the minds of young people. They are born with it. They will keep on fighting. ”
From left to right: Neri Colmenares, Abdul Aziz Muhamat, Juwairiya Mohideen, Nemonte Nenquimo and Intisar Al-Amyal. (True Heroes Films)
A new online tool has been launched to champion human rights defenders and bring greater recognition to their work. Launched this month by True Heroes Films, a Geneva-based media organisation which uses digital storytelling to raise the profile of human rights defenders around the world, the Digest of Human Rights Awards includes over 2,800 winners of 220 prestigious awards.
The Digest, while raising awareness about the work of human rights defenders, also aims to serve as a useful tool for both the media and the human rights world to go beyond the often fleeting publicity that surrounds award ceremonies and ensure their work is not forgotten.
Hans Thoolen, co-founder of True Heroes and the Martin Ennals Award, told Geneva Solutions that the idea for the digest came out of a research project he undertook in 2013 into the value of human rights awards.
Awards help bring greater recognition to a cause, boosting an individual’s profile and granting them greater protection, be it through prize money or the support of NGOs. However, many awards remain relatively unheard of and receive very little publicity, which Thoolen said is “absolutely crucial” to their value.
“Journalists are incorporated into the broad human rights movement. Without publicity, human rights defenders would be working mostly for nothing,” said Thoolen. “They need public attention for their cause and what they are trying to change. Without it, nobody would know what they are doing.”
In fact, the Digest reveals journalists make up the largest professional group of award recipients, with more than 400 laureates from the media. The database also provides images of the laureates and biographies of their life and work, as well as details of the awards themselves.
“Human rights awards generally try to achieve three main objectives,” explained Thoolen. “One is recognition at a psychological level, which should not be underestimated. Many human rights defenders are not very popular in their own society, sometimes not even within their own family, so when they get recognition that can be a very important boost to their mental health. ”
The value of awards also lies in “concrete support”, be it in the form of prize money or training opportunities, or the chance to connect with others working in the same field. They also provide protection for the laureates, which is another reason publicity is essential – to make it known that the world is watching. Although this publicity can bring with it some risks, Thoolen explains that his long career working in the human rights world has shown him that these are outweighed by the benefits.
“The feedback we get from lawyers is always the same: the [human rights defenders] have already taken enormous risks by going public. They are not afraid, and clearly the publicity helps them. ”
Showcasing the work of thousands of people from all different backgrounds, championing everything from women’s rights to freedom of speech, Thoolen also hopes the Digest will serve as a “hall of fame” for role models to inspire the next generation of human rights defenders.
“Most people get into human rights work when they’re hit by something, but usually it’s not by reading the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” said Thoolen. “What inspires people is seeing and hearing a person: a human rights defender. They are the entry point into the much broader human rights movement. ”
The piece then gives some recent winners of prestigious human rights awards featured in the Digest:
Abdul Aziz Muhamat – Martin Ennals Award, 2019.
Juwairiya Mohideen – The Front Line Defenders Award, 2020.
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 