Reprisals: Toolkit on assessing and mitigating risks for UN engagement

Human rights defenders, rights holders, victims and witnesses must be free and safe to cooperate with and give evidence and testimony to UN human rights bodies. The right to safe and unhindered access to and cooperation with the UN, and to be free from any forms of intimidation or reprisals, is both a fundamental human right and essential to the UN’s work.

This Toolkit provides tools and tactics for human rights defenders and any individual seeking to engage with the UN to better assess and mitigate these risks. If you are a human rights defender seeking to engage with the UN, read this carefully and share it with your peers!

Download the Toolkit in English and Chinese. Uyghur and Tibetan versions are coming.

Watch our video, with subtitles in English, Chinese, French, Spanish and Arabic, for an introduction to the UN’s mechanisms to address cases of intimidation and reprisals:

About ISHR’s work on intimidation and reprisals

ISHR seeks to ensure that national, international and regional human rights systems have adequate mechanisms in place 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.

Watch our video on reprisals:

ISHR has compiled all cases of reprisals documented by the UN in this database. 

ISHR’s 2024 submission on trends and recent cases in China examines the troubling trend of reprisals against civil society actors by the People’s Republic of China, particularly those engaging with UN human rights mechanisms. It highlights the systematic measures taken by the Chinese government to suppress civil society’s engagement with international bodies, under the guise of national security.