What Next? conference in Mexico City The Quest to Protect Journalists and Human Rights Defenders in a Digital World Rapporteur: Cynthia RomeroExecutive Summary 1 About the Rapporteur Cynthia Romero is senior program officer for Latin America at Freedom House. Ms. Romero has over a decade of policy and programming experience, with expertise in civic participation, freedom of expression, and youth engagement in Latin America and Executive Summary Around the world, governments and non-state actors are using sophisticated techniques to monitor, threaten, and harass human rights defenders (HRDs) and journalists. The growing use of digital technology has empowered activists to rally citizens around common causes and hold governments accountable, but it has also opened new doors for surveillance and harassment of activists and citizens’ activities online. On November 14–15, 2013, Freedom House, funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), held a global conference in Mexico City entitled “What Next? The Quest to Protect Journalists and Human Rights Defenders in a Digital World,”1 which brought together over 60 policymakers, donors, and activists to explore the full range of emerging threats and best strategies to overcome them; take an honest look at what is and is not working; and chart a path forward for more proactive and realistic solutions to build the resilience, sustainability, and relevance of HRDs and their movements. The conference sought to answer “what’s next?” by identifying opportunities that can be exploited to build up frontline defenders and their ability to uphold human rights principles fearlessly and strategically at home and abroad. Among the key findings were the following: • HRDs are facing a shifting political landscape in which restrictions against their work rapidly evolve and threats arise from state and non-state actors. To push their agenda ahead, HRDs, implementers, and donors must focus on contingency planning and put systems in place to prevent attacks and reprisals rather than responding after the fact. • Digital security tools are useless if they are not introduced with proper accompaniment so that trainers can assess beneficiaries’ needs and risk profiles, and help activists think robustly about changing their online and offline behavior and implementing protocols to safeguard themselves. Donor funds should be geared towards replicating and localizing existing tools and making sure they are used responsibly, rather than creating new tools. Overview Around the world, governments and non-state actors are using sophisticated techniques to monitor, threaten, and harass human rights defenders (HRDs) and journalists. The growing use of digital technology has empowered activists to rally citizens around common causes and hold governments accountable, but it has also opened new doors for surveillance and harassment of activists and citizens’ activities online. With support from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Freedom House held a global conference in Mexico City on November 14–15, 2013, entitled “What Next? The Quest to Protect Journalists and Human Rights Defenders in a Digital World,”2 which brought together over 60 policymakers, donors, and activists to explore the full range of emerging threats and best strategies to overcome them; take an honest look at what is and is not working; and chart a path forward for more proactive and realistic solutions to build the resilience, sustainability, and relevance of HRDs and their movements. Participants engaged in highly interactive discussions and exercises designed to elicit collaborative and innovative answers to “what’s next?” by identifying opportunities that can be exploited to build up frontline defenders and their ability to uphold human rights principles fearlessly and strategically at home and abroad. The host location of Mexico provided a perfect backdrop to address these questions as the location of one of Freedom House’s largest programs bolstering protections for journalists.3 This report summarizes the key findings and proposes recommendations from the conference. This is due in part to the rise of authoritarian internationalism,4 in which authoritarians increasingly collaborate in order to roll back internationally accepted human rights norms, at home and abroad, that stand in the way of their efforts to concentrate power and satiate the interests of elites. On the domestic front, authoritarians trade worst practices to restrict HRDs that seek to hold them accountable, including sharing surveillance technologies and intimidation tactics, as well as sophisticated legal and fiscal restrictions to criminalize civil society organizations (CSOs) and restrict freedom of expression, assembly, and association. In response, the U.S. and other democratic countries have sought to support HRDs in pushing back against these restrictions. However, the latest revelations of the U.S. government’s mass surveillance programs have put into question the prevalence and purpose of surveillance by democratic states, hurt U.S. credibility as a proponent of Internet freedom, and strengthened claims of a double standard by authoritarians who purport they too surveil HRD activity because of national security. To avoid complying with human rights standards that check their authority on the international stage, authoritarians also seek to undermine the jurisdiction of international and regional institutions, as recent attacks against the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and Kenya’s efforts to withdraw from the International Criminal Court illustrate. While authoritarian voices are united in challenging the authority and legitimacy of international mechanisms that might hold them accountable, democratic countries are at best ambiguous about investing in these institutions and, at worst, complicit in asserting that the international community should not interfere in domestic affairs. Authoritarian regimes also play on the non-intervention principle to criminalize international cooperation and foreign assistance to HRDs, as evidenced by the termination of direct USAID and other donor programming in Russia, Bolivia, and elsewhere. Unfortunately, many democratic countries have failed to push back on these creeping restrictions, and to articulate a response that reinforces human rights promotion as an essential core of their foreign policy and development strategies. While authoritarian regimes are emboldened to pursue unchecked power and avoid domestic and international accountability, HRDs and their democratic supporters around the world are struggling to promote universal human rights, retain popular support for these values, and uphold the responsibility of the international community to hold governments accountable to these norms. Many human rights activists and international support groups are vulnerable, underfunded, and adrift on how to safely, sustainably, and effectively advance their causes—and protect themselves while doing so. Although international donors and human rights organizations, including Front Line Defenders, Freedom House, and many others, offer rapid response emergency assistance that provides a vital lifeline to HRDs and CSOs under attack, emergency support funding is limited and, therefore, primarily reactive and short-term. Moreover, so long as foreign donors do not engage in forceful diplomatic challenges against 4 CONFERENCE REPORT What Next? The Quest to Protect Journalists and Human Rights Defenders in a Digital World authoritarian laws criminalizing foreign assistance, CSOs risk reprisal when they accept financing and support from these donors. Many HRDs have found innovative ways to stay safe in the face of attacks, fight back against restrictions, and gain popular support for their causes. However, although international solidarity exists among those advancing human rights, the human rights community has not tapped into its comparative expertise and lessons learned to capture these success stories and use them to put forth proactive and holistic protection strategies to build the resilience, sustainability, and relevance of HRDs and their networks. In response, Freedom House sought to answer the following question: What have we learned from the latest wave of authoritarianism, and how do we use what we learned to get ahead of the game and ensure the survival and sustainability of human rights and those working to advance them? During the conference, we set out to pursue the following objectives: • To better understand how practices and policies by foreign donors, implementers, and HRDs themselves inadvertently make them more vulnerable. • To articulate proactive, achievable, and relevant solutions to tackle the digital, physical, psychological, and other vulnerabilities of HRDs, including women, youth, and LGBTI HRDs. • To craft a roadmap that lays out strategic parameters to overcome the vulnerabilities and exploit the strengths of HRDs, including women, The following recommendations arose from the discussions. Activists should: • Be proactive. If activists are to get ahead of the game, they must be vigilant about their security. Activists must realize that using digital security tools is just one part of changing their routines in order to think ahead and put security protocols and contingency plans in place to mitigate potential threats. Activists should advocate to donors and implementers to integrate security assistance into all programming. HRDs should work with implementers and donors to establish security protocols and contingency planning as routine exercises that are integrated into their strategic planning about their work and organizations, particularly during moments of escalated violence or impending CSO restrictions that can potentially impact their operating environment. For instance, before staging protests, organizers should prepare contingency plans to address potential physical and digital attacks. Likewise, before organizing in advance of an election, groups should strategize about their response to diverse electoral scenarios and possible electoral violence. Protection International’s work with The Human Rights Defenders Protection Unit (UDEFEGUA) in Guatemala, East and Horn of Africa Human Rights Defenders Project (EHAHRDP) in East and Horn of Africa, and Arus Pelangi in Indonesia can serve as examples of such an approach. • Wash, rinse, repeat. Improving security management is a matter of behavioral and organizational change. The only way to ensure that security trainings have a sustainable impact on the ground is for activists to internalize and systematize what they learn in their own work and that of their organizations and then share what they learned with others. Implementing physical and digital security protocols should become second nature to HRDs as part and parcel of carrying out their daily work, as well as part of their overall efforts to maintain sustainability and resilience in the face of potential or ongoing attacks. HRDs equipped with security training should work with implementers and donors to replicate that knowledge and raise awareness about the importance of security planning among their networks and the greater public. • Get to the source. Activists should work with international supporters to identify the sources of digital spyware and name and shame corporations that are providing surveillance technology to repressive regimes. They should also advocate against these practices and lobby for technology providers to revisit their policies to ensure they are not endangering activists’ identities or collaborating with repressive practices in authoritarian countries. Google’s “Good to Know” website,7 which shares useful digital security tips, and its “Digital Attack Map,”8 which illustrates Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks around the world, show a willingness by some companies to be partners in promoting digital security.
Posted on: Thu, 06 Mar 2014 23:38:21 +0000
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