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HUMAN RIGHTs DEFENDERS Protection and Resilience

 This pillar focuses on ensuring State and corporate accountability; enhancing the capacity, safety, and resilience of HRDs and strengthening the HRD protection ecosystem.

It also prioritizes HRDs’ mental health, psycho-social wellbeing, and long-term resilience. Recognizing the growing impact of technology-facilitated threats—including digital surveillance, online harassment, data breaches, and coordinated attacks—the pillar integrates protection from digital risks as a core component of comprehensive HRDs and HRDOs protection.

The protection programme offers legal assistance to HRDs who are arbitrarily arrested and maliciously prosecuted by providing them with advocates to represent them at places of detention and in court or provides bail. The Coalition also undertakes trial observation of cases that involve HRDs to ensure that the judicial process is free and fair.

Medical support is offered to HRDs/activists who are injured or fall sick due to their work. Medical support either covers the payment for medical services and/or medicine for HRDs and their families.

Psychosocial support caters for the well-being of those HRDs who have been emotionally affected by their work. HRDs who are exposed to incidences of torture, gender-based violence, assault or extra-judicial executions, to name but a few of the most serious human rights violations that HRDs fight against, often find that their work is taking a toll on their emotional well-being. Defenders Coalition engages the services of counsellors offer counselling support in such situations.

Protecting those HRDs whose work has exposed them to threats and high levels of risk, often requires that they be relocated. This is normally a short-term measure put in place while other strategies are pursued. Relocation can be local, regional or international, depending on the gravity of the case. During such periods of absence from routine work, the Coalition often arrange for the affected HRD to be attached to another organization to ensure human rights work is not disrupted or to gain some skills.

The Defenders Coalition recognizes that enhancing the intrinsic competencies, agency and voice of HRDs is critical to their effectiveness, well-being and sustainability.

Among others, Defenders Coalition enhances the capacities of HRDs in physical and digital security management; monitoring, documenting and reporting human rights violations.

The Defenders Coalition offers digital security support for human rights defenders and human rights organizations to equip them with the knowledge and skills to protect their online presence and activities, safeguarding their work and personal information from potential threats and attacks.

These include:

  • Risk Assessments and Security Enhancement
  • Digital Security Helpdesk
  • Emerging Technologies
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