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Human Rights Defenders Program
Since our founding in 1978, Human Rights First has operated on the belief that lasting, positive change comes from within a society. That is why our work has been distinguished by close and active collaboration with local and regional rights groups. Across our core program areas – supporting the work of human rights defenders, championing the rights of refugees, building a strong international system of justice, and promoting national and global security policies that respect human rights – we depend on local partners to help us create a more secure and humane world.
Human Rights First has been concerned with promoting the right to promote and protect human rights and specifically the work of local human rights activists for decades. By working in partnership with local activists, we have been able to learn about the human rights challenges they face and have worked to overcome these problems together.
In order to ensure that they are able to carry out their vital work, we provide support and assistance for these activists at the national and international levels. To advance this support, we use our longstanding access to and ability to mobilize an elite group of influential people in the United States, including government officials and diplomats, academics, corporate leaders, and U.N. officials. Through these contacts we are able to pressure governments to live up to their commitments in the 1998 U.N. Declaration on Human Rights Defenders to ensure the basic rights and freedoms needed by human rights activists to carry out their essential function.
The work of the Human Rights Defenders Program currently has three main areas:
- Support for persecuted human rights defenders and human rights defenders at risk:
We protest and mount advocacy campaigns to assist individuals and organizations threatened or targeted for persecution resulting from their activities in support of human rights. Our activities include letter writing appeals and e-advocacy, direct intervention with governments around the world, and building pressure from the U.S. government or other influential governments.
- Special focus on the impact of counterterrorism measures on human rights defenders:
In the post-September 11 world, the counterterrorism policies and practices of the United States and other countries have severely shaken the universal applicability of international human rights standards. Many countries have curtailed basic rights and freedoms and have justified such actions as being inspired by the U.S. example.
As the growing international consensus on compliance with international human rights standards has been challenged, human rights defenders in many countries face stark new challenges posed by this less favorable global environment. In some countries, human rights defenders have come under much greater scrutiny and pressure, as governments are opportunistically using the language of counterterrorism and national security to attack their work – and in the process are seeking to stymie dissent and evade criticism for violating human rights.
We work to carefully document and assess this new environment for human rights defenders. On the basis of our research and analysis, we advocate for the repeal or amendment of repressive national security or counterterrorism measures in a few selected countries. We also work to lift restrictions on specific human rights defenders; and we work for positive changes in U.S. policies towards its allies in the global war on terrorism.
With respect to U.S. policy we urge leading government officials to make statements stressing the importance of protecting human rights in counterterrorism measures and concrete changes in policies and practices – to include clear human rights criteria and conditions in bilateral security cooperation agreements.
We also highlight emblematic cases of defenders who have been persecuted or adversely impacted by counterterrorism measures, or for exposing and opposing violations perpetrated in the course of countering terrorism.
- The Human Rights Defender Policy Forum
In partnership with The Carter Center, Human Rights First convenes an annual Human Rights Defender Policy Forum in Atlanta, with follow–up events and advocacy activities in Washington D.C. Each year the forum focuses on a topic of priority concern for human rights defenders around the world and brings together a select group of leading activists in a high level forum co-chaired by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights. The activists formulate specific policy recommendations for governments and multilateral institutions and present them to leading policy makers in Washington D.C, and elsewhere. The next forum will be held in June 2005.
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