The Alliance for Lawyers at Risk
The Alliance for Lawyers at Risk is an independent UK-based pro-bono network, founded in 2010, that provides moral and legal support to lawyers and human rights defenders working in precarious circumstances. The Alliance supports the work of PBI and other organisations.
The Alliance was founded in 2010 by Peace Brigades International UK patron, the late Sir Henry Brooke, and has since then been collaborating closely with PBI in providing legal expertise to the human rights defenders PBI accompanies. It's current president is Sir Patrick Elias.
Sir Peter Roth, Sir Patrick Elias, Mama Rahma and Samuel Kiriri (left to right)
Kenya speaker tour
In December 2019, Alliance members met with grassroots Kenyan HRDs Samuel Kiriro and Rahma Wako. They are part of the burgeoning Social Justice Centre Movement, which aims to document extrajudicial killings by the police in the slums of Nairobi.
Grassroots human rights defenders in the urban settlements are instrumental to documenting serious human rights violations, bringing perpetrators of extrajudicial killings and sexual violance to account, ensuring that evidence about human rights abuses is documented, and that victims in the slums have access to justice and to the redress they deserve.
Emergency response: Colombia
Sentence T-342/20 censures the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó for publicly denouncing violations carried out by armed actors in the region. This followed public complaints from the Peace Community about tolerance, ineffectiveness, silence and complicity of the 17th Brigade in carrying out human rights violations in the region.
On December 10, 2020, the Peace Community filed an appeal for annulment due to a) ignorance of the jurisprudential precedent of the same Constitutional Court regarding the right to freedom of expression in relation to the right to a good name, b) omission of the duty to apply the tripartite proportionality test and, c) failure to perform conventionality control. This is an extraordinary appeal and its study is exceptional.
In the first quarter of 2021 Alliance members Kirsty Brimelow QC and Camila Zapata Besso submitted an amicus curiae in support of the Peace Community stating that the effect of measures must be understood in the context in which they occur.
“Where defamation legal actions are brought by high ranking state officials in relation to assertions made by human rights defenders concerning state responsibility for serious human rights violations, in the context of previous serious human rights violations at the hands of the state and an ongoing situation of general risk and lack of protection of human rights activists, these may foster intimidation and inhibition which places human rights defenders in a de facto situation of increased vulnerability and may unduly curtail their freedom of expression.”
Carlos Morales is a member of the Peace Community in Colombia
Other actions
In January, Alliance members provided pro-bono expert legal support to human rights lawyers in Indonesia working on high-profile cases of criminalised human rights defenders.
In February, PBI UK and the Alliance for Lawyers at Risk organised a delegation to Kenya to discuss the needs of grassroots human rights defenders. Read alliance member Julia Lowis' account of the trip here.
In February the Alliance endorsed a joint public letter led by Lawyers without Borders Canada which highlighted concerns around judicial cases involving the Uribe family in Colombia. The Alliance supports a joint civil society platform providing observation to the ongoing trials.
Throughout June and July the Alliance together with PBI UK organised a series of 6 webinars on different themes including women’s rights during COVID-19, Environmental defenders, and the Legal Community and Human Rights.
In November 2020 the Alliance met Maryanne Kasina and Anthony Kimani, two Kenyan grassroots human rights defenders. They have played a vital role in the expansion of the social justice centre movement in Kenya, founding the social justice centres in their respective communities of Kayole and Kiamaiko. Members of the Alliance were impressed by their integrity and obvious commitment. During the meeting Ms Kasina and Mr Kimani described in some detail the human rights situation in the urban settlements of Nairobi. They highlighted extremely concerning trends of disappearances and extra-judicial killings.