Event
November 2, 2024
Human Rights First and our partners in the targeted human rights and anti-corruption sanctions coalition lead “Magnitsky Month” to advocate for the expanded and improved multilateral use of Magnitsky-style sanctions in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, European Union, and Australia. Register here for the 2024 Magnitsky Month events:
Authoritarian regimes around the world regularly use arbitrary detention as a tool of repression to silence dissidents, human rights defenders, journalists, and other perceived government critics and detain U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents as bargaining chips. Advocacy for their release often involves coalition building and engagement with multiple governments and legal mechanisms — from targeted Magnitsky-style sanctions, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, the U.S. Levinson Act, and other domestic, regional, and international tools.
This virtual panel of experts and individuals impacted by arbitrary detention will discuss how civil society can mobilize collective global action to counter these authoritarian tactics and advocate for the release of political prisoners and others arbitrarily detained around thew world.
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Over the past four years, the Biden administration has established a mixed record on its use of Global Magnitsky sanctions, making important advancements in how such tools are used to respond to different types of abuses and cases, while leaving behind ongoing gaps that civil society has long called on the administration to address. With the U.S. elections on November 5, the priorities of the next administration could dramatically reshape how, where, and why Global Magnitsky sanctions are used — or not — with ramifications for efforts to multilateralize such sanctions and hold perpetrators of human rights abuses and corruption accountable.
This virtual panel discussion will bring together activists for a conversation to reflect on what the Biden administration achieved and where it fell short over the past four years of Magnitsky sanctions, and to identify the potentially significant changes in human rights and anti-corruption sanctions that the next administration might pursue.
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Hosted by the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights and co-sponsored by Human Rights First, Open Society Foundations, Pan American Development Foundation, and REDRESS
Transnational repression has become a common and systematic practice used by authoritarian governments to control diaspora and exile communities beyond their borders in order to silence or curtail dissent. Individuals who publicly criticize and counter regime narratives are frequently targeted, including journalists, human rights defenders, political opponents, and civil society activists.
This online panel will explore the nexus between transnational repression and targeted sanctions as a mechanism for accountability and deterrence. The panel will discuss the use of extraterritorial repression by Iran, Russia, and China, its impact, and the role that targeted sanctions can play in countering these threats.
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Remarks by The Honorable Professor Irwin Cotler, Founder and International Chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada
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Please register here for this event hosted by the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights.
In September, the U.S. government announced a set of sanctions against Cambodian tycoon and ruling-party senator Ly Yong Phat, along with several related companies, for their role in subjecting trafficked workers to forced labor in online scam centers. This was only the third time the U.S. government has used the Global Magnitsky program to respond to human trafficking, and it continued the trend of using this program for trafficking cases that involve physical abuse.
As part of Magnitsky Month, Human Rights First attorneys Nina Moraitou-Politzi, Amanda Strayer, and Suchita Uppal published a piece in Just Security arguing that Magnitsky sanctions should be used to address all forms of human trafficking, including cases where no physical abuse is present. From using digital technologies to exploit sex trafficking victims to governments coercing labor by threatening to withhold public benefits, trafficking without physical abuse is prevalent. This too, should be a focus of the U.S. government when imposing targeted sanctions to combat human trafficking. Read the op-ed here to learn more.
