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The Time Is NOW for Effective Public Policies to Protect the Right to Defend Human Rights © First Edition 2017, Bruselas/San José All Rights Reserved Donors

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The Time Is NOW for Effective Public Policies to Protect the Right to Defend Human Rights © First Edition 2017, Bruselas/San José All Rights Reserved Donors The Time is NOW for effective public policies to protect the right to defend human rights © First edition 2017, Bruselas/San José All rights reserved Donors Esta publicación no hubiera sido posible sin la ayuda de nuestros donantes: Author Luis Enrique Eguren CEJIL Collaborators - The Jhong Family Charitable Fund María Martín, Mauricio Ángel & Marcia Aguiluz - United Nations Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture Publishing coordinator - United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Antonio Jaén - Diakonia Graphic Edition - Plan International Clara Inés Angarita Castro - Ford Foundation Brazil ISBN: 978-2-930539-50-8 - Misereor EAN: 9782930539508 - National Endowment for Democracy (NED) - OAK Foundation - Open Society Foundations (FOSI) - OXFAM - Overbrook Foundation - Principality of Liechtenstein - Foreign Affairs Ministry of Norway - Bread for the World (Protestant Agency for Development) - European Union - Kellogg Foundation - HIVOS - Pan American Development Foundation - And private and individual donors who wish to remain anonymous Protection International Rue de la Linière, nº. 11 1060 Brussels - Belgium - Oak Foundation - Open Society Foundations (OSF) - Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) - Sigrid Rausing Trust (SRT) Center for Justice and International Law - European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR) Phone: (506) 2280-7473 San José, Costa Rica www.cejil.org Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ Preface Protection International is an organisation that specialises in the protection of Human Rights Defenders (HRDs), while the Centro por la Justicia y el Derecho Internacional (CEJIL) has been representing victims of human rights violations in the Americas - many of them HRDs - for over 25 years. This book is the product of much reflection and numerous discussions on the best ways to ensure that the right to defend human rights is guaranteed. It brings together the joint efforts of the two organisations to identify a minimum set of guidelines for the construction of public policy in the field and to ensure its effective implementation. Much has been said of the importance of people who defend human rights. Different international organisations have developed standards urging their protection, that their work should not be obstructed, that they should enjoy conditions that enable them to defend human rights, and that crimes perpetrated against them should be investigated. But few governments have taken action to implement measures of this kind. On the contrary, despite the fact that HRDs play a fundamental role in democracies, they are stigmatised, pursued, criminalised and murdered. According to Amnesty International’s Annual Report for 2016, a total of 281 HRDs were murdered around the world that year. Of these killings, 217 occured in the Americas and 85 in Colombia alone. Although the responses made to date in the form of protection measures are a positive development, they are insufficient to truly guarantee the right to defend human rights. There are multiple explanations for this: the contexts in which HRDs work, the power interests they face, the limited resources with which they count, and the range of threats to which they are subjected. To this should be added the low levels (at times the absence) of political commitment to combating impunity for acts of aggression against HRDs or to recognising the legitimacy of their work. The current situation cries out for the development of public policies that are informed by and respond to this complexity. This book is a reflection on these topics, but it also makes proposals. We hope that our experience in the field will permit us to provide technical suggestions that will in turn enable HRDs to contribute to the discussions currently taking place in many countries around the world, and to establish relations with decision-makers to en able them to understand the importance of approaching the subject from all possible angles. Viviana Krsticevic Liliana De Marco CEJIL Protection International 7 Human Rights Defenders as objects of protection: rational, autonomous individuals with power to act ........................................................................ 57 The security threats faced by Human Rights Defenders: physical and structural violence .......................................................................................................... 60 Table of Contents A critique of the categorisation of the risks faced by Human Rights Defenders ........... 62 What happens to the perpetrator? How are aggressions against Preface .......................................................................................................................................... 5 Human Rights Defenders constructed? .............................................................................. 65 Executive Summary .................................................................................................................... 9 By way of conclusion: Human Rights Defenders as subjects (of rights) Methodology ............................................................................................................................. 11 and not just as objects (of protection) ................................................................................. 67 Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................... 11 Note on gender and language in the Spanish original .......................................................... 11 PART 3. The implementation of existing protection mechanisms ................................... 69 On the translation of the quotations ....................................................................................... 12 3.1. Routines and procedures in existing mechanisms ........................................................... 70 The target population and its access to public protection policies .................................. 70 PART 1. The protection of Human Rights Defenders: translating international norms to the domestic sphere .................................................................................................. 13 The response of protection policies: procedures and timescales ..................................... 76 1.1. Human Rights Defenders: Who are they and why should states protect them? .......... 14 The trust required between those with a duty to protect and those with a right to be protected .................................................................................................. 79 Why are national policies to protect the right to defend human rights needed? .......... 16 Systems for monitoring and analysing the security situation 1.2. What should be included in laws or policies on the right to defend human rights? ... 20 of Human Rights Defenders ................................................................................................. 81 1.3. The duty to protect Human Rights Defenders: the translation of international 3.2. The risk evaluation ............................................................................................................... 84 and regional normative frameworks into domestic policy the Americas ...................... 22 The focus on risk in protection programmes ..................................................................... 84 The first generation of programmes: Colombia and Brazil .............................................. 23 The risk evaluation: differentiating between analysing risk and determining The Mexican and Honduran laws: towards a networked system of government .......... 28 its severity ............................................................................................................................... 85 A brief initial comparison of some key aspects of these mechanisms ............................ 34 When should risk be evaluated? .......................................................................................... 86 1.4. A critical analysis of the translation of international and regional normative Why is the evaluation of risk important for Human Rights Defenders? ........................ 87 frameworks into domestic legal frameworks in the Americas ........................................ 36 What are the limitations of applying the theory of risk to the protection The dissemination of international norms at the domestic level: creating of Human Rights Defenders? ............................................................................................... 88 discourses around the contents of the norms it has been decided to adopt .................. 36 How is the focus on risk implemented in existing protection programmes? ................ 89 Changes suffered by norms during their translation to the domestic sphere ................ 37 The collective evaluation of risk (or analyses for groups, such as communities) .......... 93 The interface between “agreed reduction” and the focus adopted by public policies ... 39 3.3. Protection measures and plans ........................................................................................... 94 PART 2. Analysis of the existing mechanisms from a public policy perspective .... 41 Prevention measures or “policies” ....................................................................................... 94 2.1. The protection of Human Rights Defenders: political will,
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