Although often overlooked and underestimated in official accounts, female activists play an important role in human rights and liberation movements worldwide. While women’s roles and experiences in ...the struggle for rights and liberation worldwide have been discussed in numerous publications, there is a lack of academic literature on the roles of women in the Baloch movement in Pakistan. Using a collaborative autoethnographic, dialogic approach, this article, which is based on a conversation between three researchers, practitioners and activists from Balochistan, other parts of Pakistan, and Europe, explores the motivations and experiences of women defending the human rights of the Baloch people in Pakistan, as well as possibilities for various types of solidarities (based on international, feminist, Muslim and interethnic alliances) in Pakistan and beyond. It shows how gender, age, ethnicity, class and location impact female activists’ experiences of activism, and outlines challenges and opportunities when it comes to building national and international alliances in support of the movement for Baloch rights in Pakistan.
The term Human Rights Defenders (Pembela HAM in Indonesia) stands for any people or group whose activities revolve around the defense and promotion of human rights and other basic freedoms. In the ...course of their work, human rights defenders often experience verbal threats, attacks and even physical acts of violence that seriously hamper their activities.Women human rights defenders are an important part of human rights activism. However, they are a vulnerable group because of their position and status as women. Being vulnerable, the bodies, sexuality and identity of women human rights defenders have been violently attacked through the exploitation of gender stereotypes biased against women. However, it is apparent that women human rights defenders in Indonesia are not adequately protected. This paper employs normative analytical descriptive research methods by looking at the specificity of women human rights defenders as a vulnerable group facing specific attacks and violence, as well as examining various norms of protection. The Government of Indonesia through the existing legal norms has an obligation to fulfil the protection of women human rights defender, considering the vulnerability of women human rights defenders.
When are human rights defenders at risk of being killed? Echoing research on journalist killings, we argue that a democratic context makes it easier for human rights defenders to operate and ...incentivizes them to continue activities and to pursue information that puts them at risk. De jure protections that defenders have may not be enforced or may not protect defenders from bad actors engaging in politically motivated murder. These factors make human rights defenders more likely to be killed by actors trying to avoid the spotlight and exposure in democratic systems than in other types of regimes. Autocratic regimes provide fewer opportunities to freely advocate for human rights and to pursue or disseminate information about human rights violations by state or non-state actors, reducing the likelihood of defender mortality. Using two new sets of cross-national data on the number of killings of human rights defenders between 1997 and 2010 and from 2014 to 2020, we find that these arguments are generally supported when controlling for other factors that affect the killing of human rights defenders, particularly in democracies with lower state capacity.
Abstract Besides state actors, non-state actors and particularly private companies target human rights defenders (HRDs) and violate their rights to intimidate and stop them from challenging their ...interests. Despite the absence of responsibility of non-state actors in international human rights law, the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) set out global standards and acknowledge the role of HRDs in the promotion of human rights, urging corporations to work closely with defenders. Considering the effectiveness of the UNGPs, the article explores the potential for protecting HRDs within the framework and concludes that the UNGPs could be utilised to enhance the protection of defenders in relation to business activities. It also suggests that current efforts of implementation would be strengthened by mandatory human rights due diligence laws at the national and regional levels, and emphasises that a clear inclusion of corporate responsibility to respect defenders is required, as it would be beneficial for both sides, defenders and business enterprises.
Resumen Las consecuencias del cambio climático están presentes alrededor del mundo expresándose en aumentos de temperaturas con récords históricos, cuyos efectos se hacen sentir más fuertemente ...desafiando la posibilidad de una vida digna entre otros derechos humanos. A nivel global, el cambio climático profundiza las desigualdades y la discriminación ya existentes, las formas de adaptarse al cambio climático son también desiguales, lo que configura un escenario de injusticia ambiental que afecta directamente a quienes pertenecen a grupos vulnerables e históricamente excluidos, entre los que encontramos a los pueblos indígenas quienes mantienen una labor de defensa del medioambiente como guardianes de la naturaleza.
Abstract
This review considers Robert Fine and Philip Spencer’s Antisemitism and the Left: On the Return of the Jewish Question and explores the book’s key implications for human rights practitioners ...and their organizations. The review is one of three contributions to this 15th Anniversary Issue’s Review Section from members of the Journal of Human Rights Practice Editorial Team and Editorial Board—highlighting a book of particular significance to human rights practitioners and educators published between 2008 and 2023.
What kinds of peace do human rights defenders advocate? This question has become controversial in light of heavy criticisms raised against the scholarly paradigm that peace and human rights are ...co-constitutive universals. In this article, I explore how Colombian human rights defenders navigate potential tensions, erasures, and vested politics in their peace advocacy during the current peace process with the FARC-EP. I follow the trend in the geographies of peace literature to study the articulation of peace with human rights as situated and constitutive practices. My analysis of published activist statements maps out the discursivity of peace advocacy, that is, how human rights defenders articulate different political demands as interconnected conditions for peace and maintain a common activist space that cuts across the uneven geographies of violence in Colombia. The visualization of my results as discursive networks shows how activist practices open social and discursive spaces that integrate multiple understandings of peace, instead of obliterating differences in a single and homogenized, ‘local’ representation of peace. I further submit that elucidating how human rights defenders address peace beyond the end of guerrilla insurgency, the ambiguous role of the state, societal discrimination, and structural transformations helps us nuancing conceptual debates. We can learn from Colombian activists to move beyond rigid conceptual juxtapositions of human rights as either panacea or liberal fuel for conflict and to pay attention to how concepts are animated in political struggles to end violence.
WHEN THE DEFENDERS ARE SILENCED Madeleine Sinclair
Sur : international journal on human rights,
08/2020, Volume:
17, Issue:
30
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
If the UN is to effectively monitor compliance with human rights obligations and protect victims from abuse, it is crucial that human rights defenders and victims of human rights violations can ...access and communicate with the UN freely and safely. A number of States systematically undermine the right to unhindered access to and cooperation with UN human rights mechanisms through intimidation or reprisals. In recent years, the UN has taken some welcome steps to address the issue. However, documenting overt, reported incidents of intimidation and reprisals using standard legalistic case-based methods has been privileged over addressing the kind of intimidation that inhibits defenders from engaging with the UN at all. Perversely, this means very repressive States can escape scrutiny. To begin to tackle this issue, ISHR commissioned a study that considers the methodological challenges and opportunities inherent in measuring the impact of intimidation in particular on engagement with the UN human rights system.
The aim of this paper is to demonstrate how the Prayer Warriors of Rumuekpe, Rivers State, Nigeria, a women human rights defenders group demonstrated their ability to contribute to the peace process ...despite the patriarchal structures that impede them and conditions of extreme violence. The women saw the need to adopt methods that were in their feminine domain and therefore framed their collective action as maternal. Motherhood is a cultural role already assigned to them, and they decided to utilise it to prevent backlash and victimisation from men in the community. Primary and secondary data sources have been used in this study. Primary data included field notes and 30 interviews with men and women in Rumuekpe. Secondary data included books/book chapters, essays, journal articles, and research reports relevant to the theme of this paper. Findings show that women played an important role in the peace process. The paper demonstrates that amid gendered limitations and obstacles arising from conditions of extreme violence, women find their voices even if it is through processes like collectivising within a maternal framework, which aligns with the stereotypical idea that women are primarily mothers.
In Africa, Women Human Rights Defenders (WHRDs) have been recognized by the United Nations and other human rights organizations for their fight against female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) of ...women and girls as young as 5 years old, and child marriages of young and adolescent girls across the continent. This paper acknowledges the instrumental role played by Women Human Rights Defenders in placing gender equality and the human rights of women and girls on the policy agenda of governments on the continent. It further emphasizes to emphasize the need for governments and government leaders to prioritize the support and protection of women, girls, and vulnerable groups across the continent.
