Introductory remarks by the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, Mary Lawlor
Presentation of her thematic report: Defending dignity and claiming rights: human rights defenders hold firm to universal values as others desert them
Presentation of her country visit report on Bosnia and Herzegovina
61st session of the Human Rights Council
3 March 2026
[check against delivery]
Mr. President, Excellencies, Friends,
It is always a pleasure to be here and to interact with you. Today I want to bring the voices of human rights defenders directly to the Council. This is a venue where their presence should be integral to its functioning, yet their access is increasingly restricted. HRDs are ordinary people doing extraordinary things, engaged at once in the struggle for a better world and the dance of their own lives. They work with the unstoppable energy of hope.
But first, let me turn to my official country visit to Bosnia and Herzegovina last year.
I thank the authorities for facilitating my visit and for their constructive engagement. Thanks also to all those I met, who shared their insights and recommendations before and during the visit.
Human rights defenders in the country work in a society that is still deeply divided, where the wounds of the past have not healed yet, and where institutions are susceptible to political influence, corruption is widespread and patriarchal views remain prevalent. I commend them for their dedication, bravery and perseverance.
Defenders working on transitional justice, environmental activists, defenders of the rights of persons with disabilities, LGBTI+ people, migrants and minority groups, and journalists are among those most affected by this hostile climate.
Several recent legislative developments represented a significant setback for civic space, especially in Republika Srpska, as they exacerbated stigmatization of HRDs and journalists, imposed additional burdens and restrictions on their work, and often forced them to resort to self-censorship.
Women are at the forefront of all human rights struggles in the country, yet being a woman remains a risk multiplier there.
I am particularly appalled by the targeting of environmental rights defenders, who are often warned to stop their activism or face lengthy and costly SLAPPs lawsuits aimed at silencing them.
I also abhor the complete impunity for the attack against LGBTI+ rights defenders in 2023, which along with widespread online hate speech created a sense of insecurity among LGBTI+ defenders.
Authorities must protect human rights defenders, ensure accountability for attacks against them, and tackle negative narratives around their work, by publicly acknowledging their essential role in building a society deeply rooted in human rights.
The title of my report to you today speaks for itself:
Defending dignity and claiming rights: human rights defenders hold firm to universal values as others desert them
For this report I received submissions from an unprecedented 300 human rights defenders in 82 countries and territories. Human rights defenders have demanded to be heard at a time when states surrender their values on the altar of security, chauvinism, authoritarianism and tradition.
While governments renege on their international human rights commitments and send us spinning off course, it is left to human rights defenders around the world to keep alive the promise of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We all need freedom from fear and freedom from want – the twin pillars of the Universal Declaration. These pillars guarantee the equality and dignity inherent in every human being. Human rights defenders promote and protect that right and that dignity – the same dignity, we are privileged to have for ourselves and would not want denied. They understand that human rights are inseparable from daily living and that if we have them, then we must all work to get them for others.
Nowhere is the unshakeable motivation of human rights defenders clearer than in the words of a children’s rights activist from Somalia who said in his submission, “I defend human rights because I cannot stand by while children are cut or married off before they even become teenagers. For me, this is not ‘Western ideology’, as extremists accuse – it is simply love, dignity and the right to a future.”
Yet this work is being undermined by consistent failures in political will, the near-total subordination of values to interests, ever increasing power grabs by authoritarian governments and the massive funding cuts which have pulled the rug from under so many human rights organisations and individuals.
In Gender Apartheid Afghanistan where women and girls have been erased by the Taliban and left with nothing, a women-led ngo has had to suspend or limit their services to children and women “who are under severe psychological pressure due to deprivation, violence, discrimination and social crises”.
It has also increased the risks human rights defenders face. The Kené Institute for Forest and Environmental Studies in Peru noted that because of funding cuts: “In many cases, we have had to sacrifice protection measures for the institution’s staff in order to continue with cases.”
Many states perceive human rights defenders as the problem, and instead of trying to address the issue defenders highlight, they try to silence them.
No-one is born a human rights defender. They are sculpted into one by the injustice they witness in their society. Consider, for instance, the human rights defenders working in the Archana Women’s Centre in Kerala, India who saw gender-based violence on a daily basis but: and I quote “working with women, youth and families has shown us how defending rights is not abstract – it can transform someone’s safety, health and opportunities”
All states must do better in consistently upholding human rights and consistently condemning violations, wherever they take place, and whatever the identity of the perpetrator.
Yet so too, must the institutions designed to promote and protect human rights.
Ever growing numbers of human rights defenders are turning to the UN for support, as their domestic pathways for accountability and justice narrow. Such mechanisms must become more responsive, more agile and more urgent. Human rights defenders have laid out in this report some of the changes they believe are needed in the human rights architecture to make it to make it more effective. Many of these are changes in process, rather than one which require vast sums of money.
Notwithstanding the challenges facing Special Procedures and other mechanisms, as my six years in this role draw to a close, I would urge caution in any attempt to hollow out Special Procedures or pare back their independence. We all understand, given budget constraints, changes must happen, yet it also strikes me that it is one of the few international mechanisms left which can act bring out remote and marginalised voices and act to uphold human rights without undue political influence and untouched by double standards. Mandate holders give their time and expertise freely. In a world where so much public cynicism exists around high salaries of public officials, both nationally and internationally, this is something to be fought for.
Dear Friends, you are good people and we are all in this together. There is always something one can do as a government official to help protect a HRD. The atrocities of the world have numbed us and made us helpless and at times hopeless, but ways can be found to work to better protect HRDs. I have had many examples of good people in Ministries, embassies who are human rights defenders themselves when they have taken actionrooted in their values and their place. They do not become part of the managed retreat on human rights.
I understand there is a society-wide initiative being explored in Geneva that would see a coming together of not just states, but also civil society, academia, the media and other social actors to reaffirm their respect of, and adherence to, international law, without exception. At such a time of crisis, this is gravely needed and I urge you to support it.
I am sometimes deeply ashamed to be human when I see the unending, inhumanity and barbaric savagery around the world and the peaceful, persistent, relentless efforts and quiet resilience of human rights defenders working within the standards to which you have all agreed – only to be killed, disappeared, criminalized in many cases for decades, to get them out of the way, physically attacked, tortured, intimidated or smeared to stop them
I think Human rights defenders have a kind of mystical spirit.
That spirit is captured in the words of Betty Carino shortly before she murdered in Oaxaca.
“Today we want to live another history: we are rebelling and we are saying enough is enough. Today and here, we want to say that they are afraid of us because we are not afraid of them, because despite their threats, despite their slander, despite their harassment, we continue to walk towards a sun which we think shines strongly”
