Freedoms of association and assembly cornerstones of democracy and security, say participants at OSCE meeting

VIENNA, 16 April 2015 – The freedoms of association and assembly are the cornerstone of a vibrant, pluralistic and participatory democracy, and restrictions to these can only be allowed in line with relevant international standards and commitments, participants said today at the opening of a two-day OSCE meeting in Vienna.

The meeting, organized by the OSCE’s 2015 Serbian Chairmanship and the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), brings together representatives of governments and of civil society organizations to demonstrate how the establishment of a culture of dialogue and trust between states and individuals can serve to achieve democracy and human security through the full implementation of the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.

“The right of people to assemble and associate is essential to securing a functioning democracy and to the realization of all other human rights,” Serbian Ambassador Vuk Žugić, the Chairperson of the OSCE Permanent Council, said in his remarks to open the meeting. “We, as participating States to the OSCE, have repeatedly committed ourselves to guarantee these rights and, in fact, acknowledged that without them we cannot call our societies democratic."

Keynote speaker Hina Jilani, an advocate of the Supreme Court of Pakistan and former UN Special Representative of the Secretary General on Human Rights Defenders, told participants that, while the right to freedom of association is constitutionally guaranteed in most countries, there has been a notable rise in the number and range of laws and regulations infringing this right, resulting in serious obstacles to the work of human rights defenders.

“In a majority of countries, these new laws were adopted after 2001, and stricter rules were legitimized by counter-terrorism and security considerations,” Jilani said. “In many cases, these new laws have provided the state with the means to crack down on anyone critical of governmental action. In a few cases, they have been used by governments to put an end to human rights activities through legal action.”

Beatriz Balbin, First Deputy Director of ODIHR, said that countering this tendency meant not only focusing on legislation, but also on implementation.

“In addition to proper legislation, state officials responsible for implementing legislation need to be educated to understand basic human rights principles and trained so that they see the exercise of the freedoms of peaceful assembly and association not as a threat” Balbin said. “They must see this as an entitlement of the people that the state and its officials are obliged to protect and facilitate even where these people express diverse, unpopular or minority opinions.”

The participants are discussing specific issues related to these fundamental freedoms over the meeting’s two days, in sessions examining a human security approach to freedoms of peaceful assembly and association, non-discrimination and the freedoms of peaceful assembly and association, and enhancing the participation of associations in public decision-making processes.