Following on the heels of the joint statement on the Corona virus by the two High Commissioners [see: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2020/03/17/two-high-commissioners-issue-rare-joint-statement-re-covid-19/], more than a dozen U.N. experts on issues including on the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, health, education, and religious belief, along with the U.N. working group on arbitrary detention signed a statement urging Governments in crisis mode not to use the emergency measures to suppress human rights.
The rights experts, who are appointed by the United Nations Human Rigbhts Council but who do not speak on behalf of the world body, said they recognized “the severity of the current health crisis and acknowledge that the use of emergency powers is allowed by international law in response to significant threats” but they went on to “urgently remind states that any emergency responses to the coronavirus must be proportionate, necessary and non-discriminatory.”
The experts stressed that the use of emergency powers should be declared publicly and the U.N. treaty bodies should be notified if fundamental rights, including movement, family life, and assembly were being significantly limited. “Moreover, emergency declarations based on the COVID-19 outbreak should not be used as a basis to target particular groups, minorities, or individuals,” they insisted. The emergency, the experts said, “should not function as a cover for repressive action under the guise of protecting health nor should it be used to silence the work of human rights defenders.”
They warned that some states might find the use of emergency powers “attractive because it offers shortcuts.” “To prevent such excessive powers to become hardwired into legal and political systems, restrictions should be narrowly tailored and should be the least intrusive means to protect public health,” they said.
The speaker was: Paola Salwan Daher, Center for Reproductive Rights:
…….International human rights mechanisms have a key role to play in reflecting and amplifying the demands coming from feminist and women’s rights movements. The respect, protection and fulfilment of the human rights of women and girls, which includes the full realization of women’s and girls’ sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), is at the heart of gender equality, and without which it cannot be achieved.Treaty Monitoring Bodies and Special Procedures alike, informed by the work of women’s rights and feminists groups and individuals, have repeatedly recognized that women experience intersectional discrimination and that States have an obligation to address the particular needs of marginalized groups of women and girls such as adolescents, women living with HIV, women living in poverty, minority women, rural women, migrant and refugee women, women from LBTIQ communities and women with disabilities.
States have an obligation to address underlying structural factors which negate their autonomy in decision-making regarding their own lives, health and bodies, to ensure that their agency and right to substantive equality are respected in all aspects of their lives.
Accountability is central to the realization of human rights and is a core demand of women human rights defenders. Accountability includes ensuring participation, transparency, empowerment, sustainability, and non-discrimination as well as meaningful and effective remedies to victims and survivors of violations, including of women human rights defenders (WHRDs), including young women.
As 19th century feminist activist Emma Goldman famously stated, ‘This is not my revolution if I can’t dance to it’. Contemporary social movements have demonstrated the incredible power of feminist mobilization: as we commemorate International Women’s Day, let us celebrate the creativity, resilience, sense of strategy, solidarity and political savviness of women human rights defenders throughout the world, and commit to ensuring a meaningful place at the table, and in the streets, for all women in all of our diversity.
Gabriel Ewepu in the Vanguard of 5 March 2020 reports that 95 Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), under the auspices of Coalition of Civil Society Organizations for Protection of Civic Space, called on the Nigerian Senate to reject the Anti-Social Media Bill. This call was contained in a statement signed by leaders of the 95 during a media conference in Abuja. The statement reads in part:
At the 43rd session of the Human Rights Council, States will consider a resolution extending for three years the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of Human Rights Defenders. Civil society organisations from across the world are calling on all States to support the consensus renewal of the mandate, and to resist any attempt to undermine the mandate and States’ obligations. This is a key opportunity for States and the Council to demonstrate their support and recognition for the indispensable role defenders play to ensure that all people enjoy freedom, dignity, justice and equality. Despite their vital contribution, both some governments and non-State actors are still seeking to silence defenders as they expose injustices and demand accountability for all.
The mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders is integral to their protection and recognition, globally. It gathers and responds to information on the situation of defenders around the world, engages constructively with governments and non-State actors and provides expert recommendations to promote the effective implementation of the Declaration on human rights defenders (‘the Declaration’). See also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2019/09/11/what-should-michael-forsts-successor-as-rapporteur-on-hrds-look-like/
In 2019, the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly supported the vital work of defenders. The Human Rights Council recognised the critical role of environmental human rights defenders in protecting natural ecosystems, addressing climate change, attaining the sustainable development goals (SDGs). The General Assembly passed by consensus a resolution focusing on implementation of the Declaration and some key elements of protection policy; the resolution also attracted a record number of co-sponsors.
More than 50 Civil society organisations from across the world are calling on all States to support the extension of the mandate of the Special Rapporteur by:
Participating positively in the negotiations on the resolution,
Presenting early co-sponsorship of the text,
Resisting any attempts to dilute the mandate or State obligations, and
On 24 February, 2020 over 50 NGOs and individuals reminded the UAE authorities that “ Freedom of expression must be upheld at all times, not only tolerated during Hay Festival Abu Dhabi”
As the Hay Festival Abu Dhabi opens on February 25–28, 2020 in the United Arab Emirates, we the undersigned call on the Emirati authorities to demonstrate their respect for the right to freedom of expression by freeing all human rights defenders imprisoned for expressing themselves peacefully online, including academics, writers, a poet, and lawyers. In the context of the Hay Festival, the UAE’s Ministry of Tolerance is promoting a platform for freedom of expression, while keeping behind bars Emirati citizens and residents who shared their own views and opinions. We support the efforts of festival participants to speak up in favor of all those whose voices have been silenced in the UAE. We further support calls for the UAE authorities to comply with international standards for prisoners, including by allowing prisoners of conscience to receive books and reading materials.The country’s most prominent human rights defender, Ahmed Mansoor, is currently serving a 10-year prison sentence after being convicted on the spurious charge of “insulting the status and prestige of the UAE and its symbols including its leaders” in reprisal for his peaceful human rights activism, including posts on social media. [see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/tag/ahmed-mansoor/]……
Other prisoners have been tortured in prison in the UAE. A Polish fitness expert, Artur Ligęska, was held in the same isolation ward as Mansoor, in conditions he described as “medieval.” After his charges were dismissed and he was freed in May 2019, Ligęska wrote a book in which he recounted the prison conditions in Al-Sadr’s isolation wing, where prisoners were held without running water for many months in very unhygienic conditions, and some were subjected to torture, abuse, and sexual assault. He was instrumental in getting the news about Mansoor’s hunger strike out to the world from prison in March 2019, at great personal risk.
Other human rights defenders have faced similar mistreatment in prison, where they are often held in isolation, resorting to hunger strikes to try to bring attention to their unjust imprisonment and ill-treatment in detention, such as human rights lawyersDr. Mohammed Al-Roken and Dr. Mohammed Al-Mansoori...
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The Hay Festival Abu Dhabi is supported by the UAE’s Ministry of Tolerance in a country that does not tolerate dissenting voices. Regrettably, the UAE government devotes more effort to concealing its human rights abuses than to addressing them and invests heavily in the funding and sponsorship of institutions, events, and initiatives that are aimed at projecting a favorable image to the outside world.
With the world’s eyes on the Hay Festival Abu Dhabi, we urge the Emirati government to consider using this opportunity to unconditionally release our jailed friends and colleagues, and in the interim, to at least allow prisoners of conscience to receive books and reading materials, to have regular visits with family, to be allowed outside of their isolation cells to visit the canteen or go outside in the sun. In particular, we ask that Ahmed Mansoor be given a bed and a mattress so that he no longer has to sleep on the floor, and that prison officials cease punishing him for public appeals that are made on his behalf. We ask the authorities to improve their prison conditions as a sign of goodwill and respect for people who wish to organize and participate in events in the UAE, such as the Hay Festival Abu Dhabi or the upcoming Expo 2020 Dubai, in the future. By doing so, the UAE would demonstrate that the Hay Festival is an opportunity to back up its promise of tolerance with actions that include the courageous contributors to freedom of expression who live in the country. [see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2019/10/26/celebrity-endorsements-and-the-dubai-expo-on-the-one-hand-and-the-other/]
Miriam Jackson writes for the Union Journal of 7 28 NGOs on Tuesday 5 February prompted the European Parliament to delay permission for the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) and Investment Protection Agreement (IPA) until Vietnam’s federal government agrees to protect the rights of workers and implement certain civils rights. The FTA must be approved by the European Parliament on Tuesday 11 February.
The signing NGOs include Human Rights Watch, Defend the Defenders, The 88 Project, and the Independent Journalists Association of Vietnam.
“There are notable precedents of the European Parliament setting human rights benchmarks to be met before giving their consent to bilateral deals in order to promote human rights progress,” the NGOs claim pointing to a 2016 case in Uzbekistan and the EP’s rejection in March 2019 of the EU-Turkmenistan Partnership and Cooperation Agreement. “The European Parliament needs to take the exact same strategy with Vietnam, withholding Parliament’s permission and authorizing an identical resolution outlining the civils rights problems that Vietnam must satisfy for MEPs to greenlight the offer,” the NGOs claimed.
Only once a series of human rights concerns have been duly addressed by the state authorities, MEPs should give their consent to the deals.
Journalist Carole Cadwalladr, activist Arlindo Marquês and slain journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia have all being victims of SLAPP.
.Joanna Demarco to European Commissioner Vice President Věra Jourová ahead of proposed new laws. The NGOs want to ensure that EThe organisations include the Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation, Reporters Without Borders, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth Europe.
Jourová is preparing legislation which will work to deter such lawsuits.
“In essence, SLAPPs are used to silence individuals and organisations that play a watchdog role and hold those in positions of power to account,” they wrote. Naming journalists within the European Union affected by SLAPP, the groups called the lawsuits received by assassinated journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia one of “the most striking examples which include journalists”. “Maltese reporter Daphne Caruana Galizia had 47 law suits pending against her at the time of her assassination,” they said. (The Maltese government has refused to ban the use of SLAPP suits in Malta, rejecting a motion by the Opposition in parliament).
The Shift, which works with international organisations to fight the threats against journalists, has also itself faced threats of SLAPP suits twice – one by a Russian banker and another by Henley & Partners, Malta’s concessionaire for the cash for passports scheme. The same firm also targeted Caruana Galizia prior to her assassination. In both cases, The Shift did not back down. Journalist Carole Cadwalladr, who exposed the Cambridge Analytica data-harvesting scandal, is also facing SLAPP action, the organisations noted. British co-founder of the Leave.EU campaign Arron Banks is refusing to drop the final two SLAPP lawsuits against the journalist who now started a crowdfunding campaign to cover the massive legal costs.
The organisations said that SLAPP lawsuits are not limited to journalists, but are also targeted at academia, trade unionists, activists, civil society organisations and individual citizens, including human rights defenders. Strong EU anti-SLAPP measures, including legislation and legal funds for victims, at a time when there is no such legislation in force in any EU member state will help protect those who are vulnerable to this type of legal harassment, they said. Such measures would also “send a strong political message that the EU is ready to stand up for its citizens and protect fundamental rights,” they continued.
On 13 January 2020 Amnesty International has released a joint statement, along with Transparency International and Civicus, [https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/ior30/1649/2020/en/] explaining why it will not be engaging in this year’s C20 process, a cycle of preparatory meetings leading up to the annual G20 summit, which started yesterday with a three-day “kick-off meeting”.
“The C20 is supposed to provide a platform for civil society voices from around the world to influence the G20 agenda. Since Saudi Arabia has locked up most of its own independent activists, the only domestic organizations present will be aligned with the government – which makes a mockery of the whole process,” said Netsanet Belay, Research and Advocacy Director at Amnesty International. “The C20 in Riyadh is a sham. We cannot participate in a process which is being abused by a state which censors all free speech, criminalizes activism for women’s and minority rights, as well as homosexuality, and tortures and executes critics.”
The country’s leading women’s rights activists remain behind bars and on trial for their promotion of women’s rights in the country. Scores of other individuals, including human rights defenders, have been serving lengthy prison terms for their peaceful activism or have been arbitrarily detained for up to a year and a half without charges. The Saudi Arabian authorities have also carried out executions following unfair trials and routine torture and other ill-treatment in custody.
The Saudi-led C20 process has already failed to guarantee the C20’s fundamental principles. The appointment of the Chairs of working groups and various committees was opaque and non-consultative, while arbitrary decisions have excluded experienced international groups. The C20 process is led by the King Khalid Foundation, which is connected to the Saudi Royal Family, and cannot be considered as transparent, inclusive and participatory. Since the Saudi authorities ban political parties, trade unions and independent human rights groups, there is no way the C20 meetings can be the free and open discussions they are designed to be.
The Amaury Sport Organisation should use its decision to move the Dakar Rally to Saudi Arabia to denounce the persecution of women’s rights advocates in the country, Human Rights Watch, MENA Rights Group,FIDH and 10 other international human rights organizations said on 3 January 2020. The 2020 Dakar Rally – formerly known as the Paris-Dakar Rally – will begin on January 5, 2020, in Jeddah, and finish on January 17, 2020, 9,000 kilometers later, in Al-Qiddiya.
“The Amaury Sport Organisation and race drivers at the Dakar Rally should speak out about the Saudi government’s mistreatment of women’s rights activists for advocating for the right to drive,” said Minky Worden, global initiatives director at Human Rights Watch. “Fans, media, and race teams shouldn’t be blinded by the rally’s spectacle while Saudi Arabia ‘sports-washes’ the kingdom’s jailing of peaceful critics.” [for more posts on sports washing: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/tag/sports-washing/]
Sponsors, broadcasters, and athletes are affected by sports organizations’ choices to hold major events in countries that violate basic human rights, the groups said. By agreeing to a five-year relationship with Saudi Arabia, the Amaury Sport Organisation should also agree to adopt and carry out a human rights policy that would identify risks and make use of its leverage to promote respect for human rights in Saudi Arabia and across its operations. FIFA, the global football organization, and other major companies have adopted such policies in accordance with the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.
“More than a dozen women drivers will take part in the Dakar Rally while Saudi women activists languish in jail for promoting the right to drive,” said Inès Osman, director of MENA Rights Group. “Saudi Arabia should not get a free lane because it is hosting a prominent sporting event like the Dakar Rally.”
Human rights activists Razan Zaitouneh, Samira al-Khalil, Wael Hamada and Nazim Hammadi, called the “Douma 4”. Photo credit: Free #Douma4/Facebook
A very large number of human rights groups issued a joint statement on the missing, detained and forcibly disappeared human rights defenders in Syria, calling for their release, and an end to the culture of impunity for perpetrators of crimes against humanity. This statement was originally published on scm.bz on 9 December 2019.
The groups pledge to fight impunity, as a basic guarantee for building a democratic state based on the separation of powers, the protection of human rights and citizenship, a state governed by law. We remind the parties and guarantors of the political solution negotiations in Syria that revealing the fate of the missing, releasing the detainees, ensuring justice and holding the perpetrators of major crimes against humanity accountable is the best guarantee to end the culture of impunity and lay the first cornerstone for any future stability and peace in Syria and the region.
The organizations, emphasize the following:
We will continue to defend the fundamental rights of all Syrian citizens, seek truth and establish justice and work to hold those responsible for major crimes accountable.
We will continue to pursue the establishment of a transparent, fair and national accountability mechanism with international guarantees that investigate crimes and ensure accountability, reparation, and non-repetition, as only this guarantee will ensure sustainable peace in Syria.
We reaffirm our call on the countries and guarantors involved in the building of a political solution in Syria to face their responsibilities towards producing a political solution that establishes sustainable peace. By giving priority to restoring trust between parties to the conflict, first and foremost we urge those responsible to reveal the fate of the disappeared and detained in Syria, and pressure all parties of the conflict to commit to justice and to cooperate.
We call upon the international community and the United Nations to fulfill their responsibilities to defend human rights and work hard to uncover the fate of the missing and detained in Syria and ensure the freedom and safety of human rights defenders in order to ensure the launch of a political process that establishes a democratic state in Syria.
Joanna Demarco
