CABAR.asia talked with the esteemed UN Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders, Ms Mary Lawlor, to explore potential avenues for safeguarding and upholding human rights in Central Asia. The rapporteur emphasized her people-centred approach, focusing on the most vulnerable defenders. The rapporteur encouraged anyone with reliable information about human rights defenders’ rights violations to contact her office. We discussed the importance of UN mechanisms in protecting human rights and holding governments accountable, despite the challenges of “democratic backsliding” in some countries of the Central Asian region.
Ms Mary Lawlor, a seasoned expert in the field, assumed her mandate on May 1, 2020, and currently serves as an Adjunct Professor of Business and Human Rights at the Centre for Social Innovation within Trinity College Dublin’s School of Business. Her formidable experience also includes the establishment of Front Line Defenders – the International Foundation for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders – in 2001, which concentrates on addressing the needs of human rights defenders who face risks in their line of work.
Please tell us about your mandate as the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders and how you can be contacted in case of violation of rights.
I took up the mandate of the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders almost three years ago, on 1 May 2020. Special Rapporteurs are independent experts, so I have been selected and appointed by the Human Rights Council for my expertise. However, I am not a UN staff member and do not receive financial remuneration. This status is important because it allows me to act impartially.
In a nutshell, my mandate does the following:
– I work to protect human rights defenders at risk and to promote their work in accordance with the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders;
– I receive information about human rights violations against human rights defenders and use it to raise my concerns with governments and other relevant stakeholders in official letters, called communications, which become public 60 days after being sent;
– I also engage with civil society, states, and other key actors, formally and informally, about the situation of human rights defenders in their countries;
– I make two official visits to states annually to assess the situation of human rights defenders. Afterwards, I write a report recommending how the government can better support and protect them. The last country I visited was Tajikistan. It was a very memorable trip. The detailed report will be published next year, but the end-of-mission statement with the main findings is already available online;
– Finally, I write two thematic reports and present them to the UN General Assembly and the Human Rights Council. The most recent one was presented on 15 March. I hope you find time to read it – it is an inspiring account of the human rights defenders’ successes in the last 25 years and features a success story from Kazakhstan.
Like all other mandate-holders, I have selected several priorities for my term. They are not region-specific but are around themes. For example, they include the long-term imprisonment and killings of defenders, online attacks and abuse aimed at them, and the intersection of business and human rights. I also particularly support the most marginalised and vulnerable human rights defenders. These include women defenders, those defending the rights of LGBTI+ persons, defenders who are children, and defenders with disabilities.
I also concentrate on defenders working on the rights of refugees, migrants, and asylum seekers, those working on land, indigenous, and environmental rights, and defenders working in isolated and remote areas which are not connected nationally, regionally or internationally in many cases. Other priorities for me are anti-corruption human rights defenders and reprisals against defenders who co-operate with the UN. As you see, many of these priorities are relevant to Central Asia.
From day one of my mandate, I have been talking to human rights defenders from all over the world daily – including dozens of defenders from Central Asia. I do it because my mandate is people-centred, and it is crucial for me to hear first-hand what challenges they face in doing their work and what more international actors could do to support them.
Another way to share information with me is through the submission platform or email. I encourage anyone with reliable information about human rights defenders’ rights violations and the victim’s written consent to contact me. I should warn you, however, that my mandate is limited to the situation of human rights defenders, and submissions must meet certain criteria to ensure their quality.
In Central Asia, normative liberal values of the rule of law clash with the post-Soviet autocratic inertia and the influence of anti-Western centres of power. We witness a “democratic backsliding” in some countries of the region, leading to a decline in democratic institutions and human rights, with repressive legislation and limitations on civil liberties. In such difficult circumstances, how important are the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and other UN mechanisms designed to protect human rights? What is their practical significance? What reforms are needed within the UN system to hold Central Asian governments to the commitments they took upon themselves?
The UN human rights mechanisms are very important for several reasons.
First and foremost, they allow human rights defenders to be heard and shed light on the human rights situation in their countries at the highest international level. My advice is to make use of this opportunity.
Secondly, in the situation you describe, it is harder for the governments to dismiss recommendations from other UN member states (for example, during the UPR) or independent human rights experts (for example, treaty bodies or special procedures such as my mandate) than suggestions from their civil society voiced inside the country. And here again, I want to emphasise that civil society engagement with all UN mechanisms is crucial. Nobody understands the solutions to local problems better than local human rights defenders – and UN bodies need your ideas to formulate specific recommendations that will actually work.
Finally, many UN mechanisms have a periodic follow-up, meaning the state will repeatedly be reminded of the need for change. I am convinced that follow-up is an essential step, so in my own work, I closely follow the developments in the cases I have written to governments about.
Unfortunately, international mechanisms are not always able to prevent tragedy. A blatant example is the case of human rights defender Azimjan Askarov, who was unjustly sentenced to prison in 2010 in Kyrgyzstan. Despite appeals from the UN, the European Union, and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe to the authorities for his release and warnings of his underlying health conditions, he died in detention in July 2020. I found this very hard as it was one of the cases I took up when I started the mandate, having previously known Azimjan and having visited him in prison. I continue following his case. Human rights defenders recently informed me that the court had confirmed the ineffectiveness of the investigation into the circumstances of his death, and I hope to hear about an effective and full investigation soon.
There are, of course, some positive examples – for instance, Kamilzhan Ruziev’s recent acquittal in Kyrgyzstan. I wrote to the authorities about the criminal charges against him as well as about alleged death threats, arbitrary detention, and ill-treatment. I hope Kamilzhan will be allowed to work unhindered after all he has been through, and I look forward to hearing about the accountability of those responsible.
Answering your last question, instead of talking about the reform of the entire UN system, I would like to name three improvements that I consider important from the perspective of my mandate and towards which I am working:
– First of all, it is closer cooperation of my mandate with all UN bodies. I want to ensure that all UN agencies and programmes are made more aware of the situation of human rights defenders and provide faster and better support and protection;
– Secondly, I want to enhance the use of the UPR further to improve the situation of defenders;
– And last but not least, I prioritise countering reprisals against defenders who have co-operated with the UN human rights mechanisms and offices because engagement with the UN must be safe.
I also recommend to the UN bodies how they can improve their work on specific issues. Take a look at my thematic reports if you want to learn more about this.
At the end of the day, the UN is a collection of member states, and they are the ones who decide when/if they will take action.
As a result of the accumulated systemic crises in the Central Asian states, since last year in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, we have been witnessing massive violations of human rights – from the events of “Bloody January” to the suppression of protests in Karakalpakstan and the brutal crackdown in GBAO. Many deaths have not been investigated, civil society is being silenced, and activists and independent journalists are in prison. How is the UN working on the ground to ensure that individuals who have suffered the mentioned human rights abuses in Central Asia have access to justice and reparations? Amidst such a repressive milieu, how is the international community helping to seek justice for the ordinary citizens of the Central Asian region beyond the UN human rights protection mechanisms?
My heartfelt condolences to everyone affected by last year’s tragic events. The focus of my mandate, however, is exclusively on human rights defenders, so this is all I am mandated to do.
Last year, I had several meetings with civil society and state representatives about these events. I also sent official communications to Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, drawing their attention to potential human rights violations, asking them to provide clarifications, take all necessary interim measures to halt the alleged violations and ensure the accountability of any persons responsible for them. These letters and Kazakhstan’s response are publicly available. Unfortunately, I still have not received a response from Tajikistan, but I hope it is a matter of time.
I also want to stress that I work not only in the countries you mentioned but in Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan as well, trying to consult regularly with local human rights defenders, sending communications, and reacting to events on my social media. But my work depends directly on the amount of reliable information I receive, so once again, I would like to stress that I welcome submissions.
See also: Interview with Ivar Dale about protests in Kazakhstan
Do you think Central Asia has become disillusioned with the neo-liberal messages of the West, which were relevant in the 90s and partly in the first half of the 2000s, just as the West is tired of Central Asia lagging in democratic reform and systematically violating the human rights of citizens? The international community has been slow to respond to human rights abuses in Central Asia, with the region’s countries facing limited exposure and scrutiny from the international community. In your opinion, how should the practical strategies of major normative players in the West and multilateral institutions change in relation to the support and real implementation of human rights in the region?
I do not think drawing generalised conclusions about Central Asia is right. Although the region has much in common, the level of democracy, the human rights situation, and its dynamics vary from country to country.
The human rights defenders I have met have not been disillusioned at all. On the contrary, despite the challenging conditions in which many of them work – from restrictive laws and difficulties with registering an NGO to surveillance and wiretapping, detentions, ill-treatment and long-term prison sentences, threats and attacks against them and their families – they are full of hope and ideas for positive change.
So I will say this: if foreign countries and institutions are serious about improving the human rights situation in Central Asia, they must, first of all, support local human rights defenders. And that means including defenders in their activities and giving them more visibility, raising the cases of human rights defenders with the governments (with the defenders’ consent, of course), monitoring trials, and helping to protect defenders from receiving physical threats. It also means being sensitive to local realities and not applying unrealistic requirements for their support, visas, and grants. I call for special attention to human rights defenders from vulnerable groups, including LGBTI+ defenders and those working in remote areas. From what I hear, they have the hardest time getting international support.
Could you assess the state of gender equality and women’s rights in Central Asia, including the challenges women and girls face in the region and what your mandate does to alleviate the problem? And could you comment on potential progress in supporting existing state programmes and grass-root activist initiatives and how to align the two with the UN/other multilateral actors spearheading this process?
The situation with gender equality and women’s rights varies from country to country, but there is room for improvement everywhere. Being a woman and defending human rights in Central Asia certainly takes extra courage. I hear that women human rights defenders are subjected to hate speech, smear campaigns, detention, and physical and sexualised violence. Their children are harassed and even ill-treated in retaliation for their work. There are also cases, especially in more traditional remote areas, where women defenders’ fathers, brothers, and husbands are convinced to pressure them to stop carrying out their work.
I am also hearing that in some countries, older women used to be persecuted less, but this is no longer the case. And unfortunately, the cases from the region confirm this trend. For example, 70-year-old woman human rights defender Karomat Ashirova was convicted of five years of liberty restriction in Uzbekistan last February. And in December, 65-year-old woman human rights defender Ulfathonim Mamadshoeva was imprisoned for 20 years in Tajikistan.
These risks are not unique to Central Asia; unfortunately, many countries in the world have similar problems. Women human rights defenders are targeted not only for what they do but for who they are because they are often seen to defy cultural or traditional norms. Patriarchy, religious fundamentalism, and conflict make it very difficult and dangerous for women human rights defenders. But I want to emphasise that women human rights defenders are the leading force of the human rights movement in many Central Asian countries. The governments should acknowledge their essential role and ensure they are appropriately recognised and protected.
I have made women human rights defenders one of my top priorities and strive to support them as much as possible through the tools at my disposal. If any Central Asian government needs recommendations on better protecting women defenders, I will gladly assist them. So far, I have not received such requests.
After the war in Ukraine, virtually any sphere in Central Asia is being securitised. Civil society cannot work and exist without a sanction from the state. The UN is finding a compromise in its work with the ruling regimes of the region’s states. What is your assessment of the prospects for the viability of civil society and the human rights movement in Central Asia? In the face of growing repressive pressure, what can each country’s civil society do to support the protection of human rights?
Civil society in Central Asian countries has already faced many obstacles, and I have no doubts about its resilience and sustainability. My main advice is solidarity within the human rights community in each country and within the region, further exchange of experience, and joining the defenders’ efforts in human rights campaigns and advocacy. Developing relationships with regional and international journalists is also crucial. Finally, I recommend staying in touch with the OHCHR Regional Office for Central Asia to those who have not yet engaged with them.
What were lessons from previous efforts of the past decades learned to promote human rights in Central Asia? How can these lessons be applied to future efforts to advance this important agenda?
Over 30 years have passed since the disintegration of the USSR and the independence of Central Asian states. I think the main lesson is that the way to democracy and human rights is a long one.
By the way, this year marks the 25th anniversary of the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, and in June, I am meeting with young human rights defenders from all over the world. I hope to see some young people from Central Asia at this event and hear their vision of the future of human rights.
What is your vision of the future of human rights defenders in Central Asia in a world of uncertainties and poly-crises?
I am an optimist and would like to see Central Asia where governments show the political will to publicly recognise and support the legitimate peaceful work of human rights defenders in accordance with the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders. Furthermore, I would like to see a diverse community of human rights defenders from different backgrounds and all walks of life, with many young people. And I am always in touch and ready to work with you to achieve this goal!