Human Rights Defenders Face Intensified Security Risks and New Obstacles Post-9/11

New Report Advocates for Changes to Better Protect Rights Defenders

GENEVA - The way many governments have chosen to combat terrorism in the wake of September 11 has eroded the personal security of human rights defenders and damaged their ability to investigate rights abuses and advocate for reform, a new report scheduled to be released later this year by Human Rights First says. The escalating challenges facing human rights defenders in many countries combine to create an acute challenge for the international human rights movement.

An introductory essay from the report, Defending Security: The Right to Defend Rights in an Age of Terrorism, was released today at the UN Human Rights Commission during a Human Rights First-led panel discussion. The discussion featured UN Special Representative for Human Rights Defenders Hina Jilani; Tanya Lokshina, a representative of the Moscow Helsinki Committee; Elizabeth Wong, a representative of SUARAM, Malaysia; and Neil Hicks, director of the International Program at Human Rights First.

"Activists around the world are under attack for standing up for fundamental human rights principles at a time when too many governments are declaring that it is acceptable to violate human rights in the war against terrorism," said Hicks.

Major finding of the report include:

• Human rights defenders are increasingly branded as unpatriotic - or as terrorists - by officials at the highest levels and thereby exposed to the threat of violence. This branding places human rights defenders at great risk of extralegal violence, particularly where government forces operate clandestinely, or through security forces such as paramilitary militia for which they may readily evade accountability.
  
• Human rights defenders are more vulnerable to abuse where their governments claim to be a part of international campaigns against terrorism. Even where the legal framework is not wholly new, many governments can now exercise extraordinary powers with fewer constraints-without accountability at home, they now have far less international pressure to comply with fundamental human rights standards.
  
• Government measures in the name of counter-terrorism have severely limited the political space in which human rights defenders operate. Often based on draconian national security laws and regulations, many counterterrorist measures constrain the freedom of human rights defenders to receive and impart information, to meet privately and hold public assemblies, or even to operate in legal organizations.
  
• Human rights organizations face heightened government controls-or closure. The umbrella of counterterrorism has meant the proliferation of laws and practices through which human rights organizations are denied registration, barred from holding meetings, forbidden to disseminate information, or closed by executive order without review.
  

The report also notes that an erosion of the United States commitment to upholding international human rights standards at home has created a "ripple effect" that has led to a worldwide setback for rights and rights defenders. The perception that when challenged by the threat of terrorism, the most powerful country in the world violated human rights in the name of upholding national security continues to undermine the work of human rights defenders worldwide.

According to the introduction of Defending Security,

The consequences of changing U.S. policy have been more serious where partner governments, confident that they are needed for the global 'war against terrorism,' feel new liberty to persecute human rights defenders.