Human rights defenders are essential voices from our communities. They face intimidation and reprisals when engaging with the United Nations. Join our campaign to #EndReprisals!
Illustration © Charlotte Giang Beuret
Human rights defenders promote dignity, fairness, peace and justice in their homes, workplaces, communities and countries. They challenge governments that fail to respect and protect their people, corporations that degrade and destroy the environment, and institutions that perpetuate privilege and patriarchy. They are important voices from our communities.
The participation of human rights defenders in the work of international and regional mechanisms makes for better outcomes. Defenders bring crucial information and perspectives regarding human rights situations on the ground; and international and regional mechanisms depend on that knowledge and input to make informed decisions. Guaranteeing everyone a safe and unhindered access to international human rights mechanisms is therefore essential for the UN effectiveness and relevance.
Yet, some States try to escape international scrutiny by systematically preventing defenders from engaging and cooperating with UN bodies and mechanisms, and by punishing and silencing those who do engage. They do so through repressive tactics that create fear and range from administrative hurdles and travel restrictions to intimidation, imprisonment and killings.
This is not right.
Everyone has the right to access and safely communicate with the UN.
We want human rights defenders to have a seat at the UN table and be able to effectively and safely engage with UN human rights mechanisms and bodies.
We want States and non-State actors to refrain from intimidating or carrying out reprisals against defenders when they engage or seek to engage with the UN. States must take a clear and public position at the UN against intimidation and reprisals and hold their peers to account.
We call on States to publicly condemn reprisals and intimidation against those who engage with the UN, and raise specific cases of victims. When intimidation and reprisals do occur, we want the UN to effectively address these cases, support the victims and push for accountability and redress.
We mobilise diplomatic missions, encouraging them to speak out and raise individual cases of reprisals against defenders at the UN and in other spaces and hold their peers to account.
We convince the UN Secretary General and his team to acknowledge and document ALL cases of reprisal and intimidation by including them in his annual report on reprisals and intimidation against defenders engaging or seeking to engage with the UN and its human rights mechanisms.
We encourage governments, activists, and concerned individuals to stand in solidarity with human rights defenders and organisations who are subject to reprisals and intimidations.
We push the UN system to achieve a more sustained attention on the issue of reprisals and establish clearer protocols on how to prevent, respond and follow up on cases of reprisals. To do so we will influence the content and wording of the resolution discussed by the Human Rights Council in September.
To achieve our goals, we will be gradually raising the profile of 6 cases or situations that illustrate how human rights defenders are prevented from or punished for engaging with the UN. Take action for them now and help #EndReprisals!
Until 2020, civil society in Hong Kong was vibrant and had engaged consistently and constructively with the UN. This engagement came to a screeching halt after the imposition by Beijing of the National Security Law for Hong Kong (NSL), which entered into force on 1 July 2020. This must end! Stand in solidarity and call on the UN Secretary-General to raise concern about the situation directly with the Hong Kong authorities, as well as the Chinese government.
Click to tweetClick on the cases to find out more about the human rights defenders we are supporting within this campaign.
Anexa Alfred Cunningham is a brave Miskitu Indigenous leader, woman human rights defender, lawyer and expert on Indigenous peoples rights from Nicaragua. She defends the ancestral land and natural resources of Indigenous and Afro-descendant Peoples of the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua. She has also worked with Indigenous and Afro-descendants communities in order to investigate the many abuses they suffer and denounce them to the United Nations. These Peoples face attacks by armed groups who seek to take away their ancestral territory with the State’s approval.
In July 2022, after participating for the first time in a session of a group of United Nations experts on the rights of Indigenous Peoples, where she sits as one of the experts, the authorities of Nicaragua denied her entry into her own country. Anexa resides in Nicaragua with her family but she was prevented from boarding her return flight and reuniting with her underaged children. She has remained stranded in Geneva since then.
The President of the UN Human Rights Council has repeatedly requested clarification from the Nicaraguan government and asked for Anexa to be able to safely return to her home and family but the government has not responded. She remains in a situation of unlawful, forced exile from her own land.
Anexa is not the only one in this situation. The UN Secretary-General has reported at least seven cases of reprisals against Nicaraguan activists for cooperation with the UN since May 2020.
We want Anexa and Nicaraguan human rights defenders to be able to effectively and safely engage with the United Nations. And we want the government of Nicaragua to refrain from intimidating or carrying out reprisals against defenders.
Call on the UN Secretary General to include Anexa’s case in his report and on UN member States to publicly raise her case at the UN and push for accountability and redress – so she can finally fly home to her community and continue her leadership as an indigenous woman and human rights defender. Sign the petition on change.org!
Vanessa Mendoza Cortés is a psychologist and the president of Associació Stop Violències Andorra, which focuses on gender-based violence, sexual and reproductive rights, and advocates for safe and legal abortion in Andorra. Andorra enforces a total ban on abortions.
Associació Stop Violències Andorra supports pregnant women and girls to access abortions abroad and speaks out to demand access to safe and legal abortion in Andorra. Vanessa Mendoza Cortés is the main spokesperson for the organisation.
In September 2019, Associació Stop Violències Andorra submitted a civil society report to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (UN CEDAW).
In October 2019 during the 74th CEDAW Committee session Vanessa Mendoza Cortés made a statement in Geneva that was publicly broadcast. She spoke out about the harmful impact (such as the forced maternity in girls and women who have been raped) of the total abortion ban on women and girls in Andorra among others.
At the beginning of November Vanessa was summoned by the Andorran police in relation to the demonstration the association organised on 28 September 2019, for which the association had authorisation.
On 8 November 2019 CEDAW made its concluding observations on Andorra public. In a press conference on 15 November 2019, the head of the Government Xavier Espot Zamora reported that it had asked the Public Prosecutor’s Office to investigate Mendoza Cortés’ report submitted to the Committee and other statements made by the president of the organization for possible indications of a criminal offence against the reputation of the Andorran administration.
In September 2020, the public prosecutor charged Vanessa Mendoza Cortés with ‘slander with publicity’ (article 172 of the Penal Code), ‘slander against the co-princes’ (article 320 of the Penal Code) and ‘crimes against the prestige of the institutions’ (article 325 of the Penal Code). In October 2022, a judge issued an indictment against Vanessa Mendoza Cortés for the alleged “crimes against the prestige of the institutions” involving a potentially heavy fine (up to 30,000 euros) and a criminal record if convicted.
The evidence included in the indictment refers to the content of the civil society report submitted by Associació Stop Violències Andorra to the CEDAW in 2019 and mentions the media statements made by Vanessa Mendoza Cortés.
There is no trial date yet.
We want Andorra authorities to drop the charges against Vanessa, close the case file and publicly condemn any intimidation or reprisals against human rights defenders engaging at the UN.
Call on UN member States to publicly raise Vanessa’s case at the UN, call on Andorra to drop the charges against her and push for accountability and redress so she can continue with her human rights work.
Kadar Abdi Ibrahim is a human rights defender and journalist from Djibouti. For 20 years, Kadar was a high school math teacher and then a Professor and Researcher at the University of Djibouti. He was dismissed due to his human rights work.
From 2015, Kadar was the co-director and chief editor of L’Aurore, Djibouti’s only privately-owned media outlet. In 2016, the newspaper was banned following the publication of a story on one of the victims of the Buldhuqo massacre, crackdown by Djibouti security forces on a religious celebration and a meeting of the opposition on 21 December 2015 that left at least 27 people dead. Kadar is also the president of the political party Movement for Democracy and Freedom (MoDEL) since December 2021. Over the years, Kadar has been arrested several times by the police in an attempt to silence him.
In April 2018, just days after returning from Geneva, where Kadar carried out advocacy activities ahead of Djibouti’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) at the UN Human Rights Council, intelligence service agents of the Service de documentation et de sécurité (SDS) raided his house and confiscated his passport.
Despite his case being identified as a clear case of reprisals by the UN Secretary-General, who reported on it to the Human Rights Council in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022, his passport remains with the SDS. He has been unable to leave his own country for the past five years. The prolongation of the travel ban obstructs Kadar from undertaking his human rights work and prevents him from directly engaging with partners and actors outside the country, including the UN.
We want the authorities in Djibouti to lift the travel ban against Kadar and return his passport so he can travel, engage with partners and the UN outside of Djibouti and undertake his human rights work without any obstacles.
Call on UN member States to publicly raise Kadar’s case at the UN and push for accountability and redress so his travel ban is finally lifted.
Until 2020, civil society in Hong Kong was vibrant. The Civil Human Rights Front (CHRF), for example, was established in 2002 with the aim of giving a platform to different organisations to promote the development of human rights in Hong Kong. The CHRF was responsible for organising the largest peaceful protests in Hong Kong’s history, notably protests against the National Security Law in 2003 with half a million Hong Kongers taking to the streets, as well as the one and two million person-strong anti-extradition law protests on 9 and 16 June 2019 respectively.
Human rights organisations in Hong Kong had engaged consistently and constructively with the UN, and regularly contributed to the work of the UN Treaty Bodies and Special Procedures. Forty-five civil society groups organised themselves into a strong coalition for policy advocacy and engagement with the Hong Kong government linked to the 2018 Universal Periodic Review, while UN expert recommendations and comments on Hong Kong were widely shared, and often addressed in substantive meetings of the Legislative Council, Hong Kong’s elected legislature. Many saw the UN as a venue of justice, as well as a source of authoritative guidance on issues ranging from police violence to abuses against migrant domestic workers.
This engagement came to a screeching halt after the imposition by Beijing of the National Security Law for Hong Kong (NSL), which entered into force on 1 July 2020.
Since the promulgation of the NSL, many activists have been prosecuted and jailed for their activities. Many NGOs have made the decision to cease operations, or dramatically shift their work, while other activists and NGO workers have chosen to – or been forced to – abandon their rights work or continue work in exile. The NSL directly places human rights defenders in a new and heightened risk of reprisals and intimidation.
Under the NSL, the act of providing State secrets or intelligence concerning national security to a foreign institution constitutes the crime of collusion. The offense of ‘collusion’ is overly-broad, in both legal scope and implementation.
State secrets and intelligence concerning national security are not defined in the NSL. There is no certainty as to whether making submissions to the UN treaty bodies, Special Procedures or the Human Rights Council would constitute collusion, as it involves providing information that could be arbitrarily determined by the authorities as ‘State secrets’ or ‘intelligence concerning national security’. The way the law is written, anyone from Hong Kong who shares information overseas can potentially be accused of collusion. Under the present circumstances, it is reasonable to presume that this includes communication or information sharing for the purpose of engaging with the UN.
Other factors have also impacted the ability of Hong Kong civil society to engage with the UN. There are no coordinating organisations anymore, nor assistance with capacity building. Organisations cannot access resources freely and safely. Even for the activists who have relocated overseas, there is the fear that the safety of their relatives or colleagues still in Hong Kong could be endangered by their advocacy overseas. They also face the difficulty of accessing information from the ground. These factors have severely impacted the ability of Hong Kong civil society to engage with the UN.
The case of the Civil Human Rights Front (CHRF) is instructive in this regard – and demonstrates the ways in which an overly-broad interpretation of ‘collusion’ undermines UN engagement and suppresses civil society’s work. The Hong Kong Police Force (HKPF), despite having worked with the CHRF for years on the arrangement of peaceful protests, issued a letter in April 2021 concerning the status of the group under the Societies Ordinance. The CHRF had registered in 2006, but de-registered two months later; they continued their work without hindrance, including through regular notification of public assemblies to the HKPF, in the years following and as recently as December 2020.
In the letter, the HKPF also required the Front to list its activities (public demonstrations and rallies), its sources of income and expenditures. Most worryingly, they explicitly asked CHRF to explain the purpose of a joint letter it sent to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in December 2020 relating to cases of alleged police violence. The CHRF was forced to disband on 15 August 2021, and its case was included in the 2021 ‘reprisals report’ of the UN Secretary-General.
In the first two years of the National Security Law, Hong Kong independent media documented the closure – under duress, or out of an abundance of caution – of nearly five dozen civil society organisations. Reflecting on this situation during the July 2022 UN Human Rights Committee review of Hong Kong, experts specifically asked several times whether the government delegation could confirm that individuals engaging with the Committee would be protected from reprisal or retaliation. At each instance, the delegation failed to provide clear guarantees, noting only that ‘normal interactions’ with international groups would not be considered prohibited activities under the NSL and, later, that ‘it would depend’ on the nature of the engagement. The same happened in February 2023 at another UN expert review, this time on Hong Kong’s implementation of economic, social and cultural rights. The executive branch’s refusal to condemn reprisals provides additional justification for the concerns of activists that the NSL, and specifically the crime of collusion, may be applied against them for their UN engagement.
We want the UN and the international community to:
Amina Al-Abdouli is 42 years old. She is a mother of five, three girls and two boys who were all under 18 at the time of her arrest. She used to work as a school teacher She was advocating for the Arab Spring and sympathised especially with the Syrian uprising.
Maryam Al Balushi, 27 years old, was a student at the College of Technology.
Amina al-Abdouli and Maryam al-Balushi were arrested in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on 19 November 2015.
Amina was detained at her home in Fujaira after tweeting in support of the Arab Spring. The Emirati authorities had been harassing her since 2012 because she wrote tweets criticising the Syrian regime for suppressing protests and violating human rights. They prevented her from traveling, investigated her, and threatened to take custody of her children if she did not stop criticising the Syrian regime.
Maryam was arrested at her home after donating $600 to a displaced Syrian family. She was referred to court on charges of financing terrorism.
The police held Amina and Maryam in incommunicado detention, tortured them and forced them into self-incriminatory confessions. Following unfair trials where they were denied any access to a lawyer, they were sentenced to five years of prison. Amina and Maryam managed to smuggle letters, as well as video and audio testimonies out of prison to speak out about their cases and inform UN experts of what was happening.
In February 2019 UN Special Procedures mandate holders sent a letter to the UAE authorities raising concerns about the alleged torture and ill treatment of the two women in detention. As a consequence, in July 2019, the UAE authorities charged Amina and Maryam with three additional crimes. The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found their detention arbitrary and noted that it was a clear case of reprisals for communicating with Special Procedures. In April 2021, a court sentenced them to three additional years of prison for “publishing false information that disturbs the public order”. This new sentence is due to their efforts to raise awareness of their cases.
They have been continually subjected to beatings and ill-treatment throughout their imprisonment, in addition to being denied basic needs such as sanitary towels, food and clean water. Amina and Maryam’s case has been identified as a clear case of reprisals by the UN Secretary-General, who reported on it to the Human Rights Council in 2019, 2020 and 2021.
We want UAE authorities to immediately release Amina and Maryam and provide them with reparations.
Call on UN member States to publicly raise Amina and Maryam’s case at the UN so the UAE release them and provide them with reparations.
Human rights defenders are essential agents of change. They promote dignity, fairness, peace and justice in their homes, workplaces, communities and countries. They challenge governments that fail to respect and protect their people, corporations that degrade and destroy the environment, and institutions that perpetuate privilege and patriarchy.
For many the United Nations (UN) is the last arena in which they can confront abuses. And yet, here too they are silenced and harassed by governments. Some States intimidate human rights defenders and victims who try to engage with UN human rights bodies and mechanisms to report violations, or carry out reprisals against those who manage to engage. Those governments see these defenders as enemies and their engagement with the UN as a threat to their image and power.
Over the past years, the reported number and severity of intimidation and reprisals cases has increased.
Acts of intimidation and reprisals aim at creating fear or blocking access to the United Nations of people who defend human rights. Reprisals and intimidation take different forms, from travel bans, threats and harassment, including by officials, smear campaigns, surveillance, introduction of restrictive legislation, to physical attacks, arbitrary arrest and detention, torture and ill-treatment, including sexual violence, denial of access to medical attention and even killings.
The right to safe and unhindered access to international and regional justice mechanisms, and to be free from any form of intimidation or reprisal for seeking justice, is both a fundamental human right and essential to the relevance and effectiveness of these mechanisms.
The participation of human rights defenders in the work of international and regional mechanisms makes for better outcomes. Defenders bring crucial information and perspectives regarding human rights situations on the ground and international and regional mechanisms depend on that knowledge and input to make informed decisions.
The UN has developed a number of mechanisms to deal with intimidation and reprisals over the last 30 years. The main mechanism is currently a report published annually by the UN Secretary-General that collects and publishes incidents of intimidation and reprisals documented by the different UN human rights mechanisms or otherwise submitted by victims.
In addition, since 2016, the Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights has been designated as the senior official to lead the efforts within the UN system to address intimidation and reprisals. You can find more information on the page of the United Nations.
While this appointment led to an increase in resources and better reporting and follow up, there is still room to strengthen the UN’s response. For instance:
ISHR seeks to ensure that international and regional human rights systems have the mechanisms to prevent reprisals and ensure accountability where they occur. ISHR provides protective publicity to human rights defenders at risk and works to bring cases of alleged intimidation and reprisals to the attention of relevant officials in an effort to press for effective preventative measures and responses.
Every year we submit a list of cases of reprisals and intimidation to the UN Secretary-General for him to include in his annual report.
In 2022, ISHR launched the #EndReprisals database which offers a platform where all cases included in the Secretary-General’s reports since 2010 are readily accessible, with detailed information on each case, including the activities of the affected groups or individual defenders, the kind of reprisals they suffered and how these were triggered. With this database, users can more easily navigate the information contained in the Secretary-General’s reports, and research, analyse, and take action on the cases or situations.
ISHR has also published a Handbook on Reprisals to help human rights defenders who engage with the UN to navigate the system and its procedures in case of reprisals or intimidation.
During the 48th session of the Human Rights Council, between the 17 September and 4 October 2021, States negotiated a resolution that aims to strengthen the response by the UN and States to intimidation and reprisals. ISHR and partners called on States through meetings, letters and on social media to support the resolution and resist any efforts to undermine and weaken it. The resolution was finally adopted by consensus on 8 October 2021!
The resolution invites the Secretary-General to bring the issue of intimidation and reprisals against those who cooperate with the UN to the General Assembly. The Secretary General can now decide to present his annual report on cases of reprisals and intimidation to the UN General Assembly. This is important because the General Assembly is the main policy-making forum of the UN and all 193 States are represented there. Reprisals and intimidation related to cooperating with the UN is a serious system-wide issue and having it discussed at the General Assembly amongst all Member States is crucial to effectively preventing and addressing it.
In order to assist stakeholders with research, analysis and action on cases of reprisals and intimidation, ISHR launched an online database compiling cases or situations of intimidation and reprisals documented by the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General between 2010 and 2020.
Cases of intimidation and reprisals against human rights defenders engaging with the UN reported by the UN Secretary General between 2010 and 2020.
Countries were cases of reprisals were documented by the UN Secretary-General between 2010 and 2020.
Reports published by the UN Secretary General on intimidation and reprisals.
Check out our selection of reports and news on intimidation and reprisals against those who engage with the UN.
On 17 April 2023, ISHR submitted its annual submission to the report to the UN Secretary General on reprisals and intimidation against defenders engaging or seeking to engage with the UN and its human rights mechanisms.
In this briefing paper, ISHR looks at the powerful role of China over the UN human rights treaty bodies (UNTBs), identifying the ways in which China deploys influence, from an official discourse that consistently focuses on restricting their scope of work to direct threats to independent NGOs who wish to engage with the UN experts.
'Colectivo 46/2' has published an Evaluation Benchmark on the implementation by the Nicaraguan government of Human Rights Council resolution 49/3 on the human rights situation in the country.
Drawing on legal analysis and illustrative cases, this report shows that one of the many challenges posed by the National Security Law for Hong Kong is an effective criminalisation of engagement with the UN - and as a result, a chilling effect on defenders' engagement.
This new ISHR report presents the evolution of China’s public stance on reprisals in dialogues at the UN, and summarises the way in which it has portrayed civil society’s cooperation with the UN as a ‘criminal act’.
A new ISHR report maps China’s presence and influence in the UN economic and social affairs system, highlighting potential risks for civil society participation and the promotion and protection of human rights.
