OSCE meeting on human rights defenders
Human rights defenders still face serious problems in many OSCE countries. Despite strong international commitments, including within the OSCE, state authorities continue to harass human rights activists with methods reaching from direct or indirect threats and intimidation to arbitrary arrests and even killings.
Present challenges
A wide range of bureaucratic obstacles are used to make the life of human rights groups difficult. In many countries, non-governmental human rights organizations, when they are not closed down outright, work in a legal void, neither officially recognized nor actually banned.
Often, human rights activists are threatened by organized crime organizations which see their illegal businesses endangered. Activists seeking to protect women from traffickers in human beings, for example, have faced violent opposition and threats from organized criminals involved in the trade. In such cases, state authorities often appear unwilling to afford human rights workers the necessary level of protection.
OSCE commitments
OSCE States have committed themselves to protecting human rights defenders. They have undertaken to respect their rights, provide remedies in case of violations of these rights, allow unhindered communication and actively support non-governmental organizations. These commitments are laid down in a number of OSCE documents, including the 1990 Copenhagen Document and the 1991 Moscow Document.
ODIHR assistance
The OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), together with OSCE field operations and other institutions, carries out a number of projects and activities to support human rights defenders in the OSCE region. These activities include training seminars for human rights activists, support for domestic election observers and monitoring of cases of human rights advocates in delicate situations.
Meeting agenda
The meeting will focus on the specific challenges faced by NGOs in their relations with governmental institutions and intergovernmental organizations in the OSCE area. It will particularly look at the challenges posed by the defence and advocacy of human rights to both NGOs and governmental institutions in the context of armed conflict or internal tensions - one of the situations where the role of human rights defenders is most crucial, but where their situation is also most unstable.
Another focus will be the pitfalls of the legal and practical protection of human rights defenders: while it is recognized that human rights defenders need special protection, it is necessary to examine the challenges and limits such protection faces. The final session of the meeting will concentrate on human rights training for officials and for human rights advocates themselves.
The meeting is expected to develop concrete recommendations for further action based on best practice across the OSCE region.