Iran: Human Rights Council must convene a special session
Fifty organisations urge the UN Human Rights Council to urgently convene a special session to address an unprecedented escalation in mass unlawful killings of protesters in Iran.
ISHR
Cross-regional consultation: Best practices on legislative protection for human rights defenders
From 6-8 September 2022, ISHR welcomed civil society representatives from Asia and Africa to discuss the strategies and best practices to achieve better legislative protection for human rights defenders.
The cross-regional consultation brought together participants from seven Asian and African countries to share the current legal framework of protection for human rights defenders in their respective national contexts and to discuss learnings from their respective national processes focused on strengthening legislative protection for human rights defenders.
The objective of the consultation was threefold:
- To provide a space for human rights defenders from across Asia and Africa to share experiences, strategies and practices in the development of and advocacy for laws which promote and protect the rights of human rights defenders, as well as those who challenge or amend laws that restrict their rights.
- To provide a space to discuss trends in the adoption and implementation of restrictive laws, or laws that restrict the rights of human rights defenders, and to discuss how legal frameworks and UN interventions could play a part in prevention frameworks or responses.
- To provide a space to discuss specific protection needs of women human rights defenders within the two regions and how to ensure that legal frameworks can respond to the specific protection needs of women human rights defenders.
The participants, from countries where there have been campaigns to strengthen legal protection for human rights defenders, were able to share their respective successes and challenges and benefit from the experiences and learnings of one another. They highlighted the importance of sharing experiences across different regions in order to enhance actions to strengthen the development of protective environments for human rights defenders.
The consultation was rich in discussions and addressed several issues in depth, including the challenges related to the gender responsiveness of national legal frameworks and the issue of implementation of legislation for the protection of human rights defenders, as well as the development and implementation of defender protection mechanisms.
‘ISHR is committed to ongoing cross-regional sharing of experiences to enhance action towards safer environments for human rights defenders’, said Tess McEvoy.
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