Directors Update: Finding Strength in Collaboration and Innovation
We are living in a time of myriad threats to rights and the environment. In a context of devastating wars and populist polarisation, too many of our leaders are focused on fear mongering and opportunism, while criminal groups and irresponsible businesses profit from the chaos. At home and abroad, the impacts of the climate crisis are being felt acutely.
Our movement is stretched. The lives of many human rights defenders are under threat, while flawed laws and weakened judiciaries are abused to criminalise activism. These dynamics are unlikely to abate in 2024, as the world participates in its greatest ever democratic jamboree. From Indonesia to Mexico, the US to the UK, more than two billion people across 50 countries are expected to go to the polls this year.
The good news is that we have the tools to make a change - especially if we work together.
Collaborations, coalitions and co-creation
Some of PBI UK’s biggest impacts last year came when we led and participated in coalitions, and connected grassroots activists with allies around the world.
Tens of organisations from across civil society came together to campaign successfully for the Government to abandon its plans to scrap the the Human Rights Act and replace it with what UK civil society had dubbed a ‘Rights Removal Bill’.
Together with civil society allies, PBI successfully pushed British embassies to support threatened activists, and the UK Government to commit to producing an Open Societies, Democracy and Human Rights Strategy. PBI is also spearheading a campaign, alongside 48 other organisations, calling on all UK political parties to make supporting, protecting and engaging human rights defenders a central pillar of their foreign policy commitments ahead of the next election.
As a member of the Corporate Justice Coalition, PBI has successfully garnered support from additional Parliamentarians and companies for our campaign for a law to hold UK businesses accountable for their global operations, investments, and supply chains. A groundbreaking Bill is now tabled in the House of Lords.
We brought together experienced human rights lawyers from across regions to carry out a fact-finding mission to Guatemala - providing crucial support at a time of democratic crisis, when local lawyers, legal systems and Indigenous leaders are under enormous threat.
Working together in 2024, we will have the strength to continue to challenge powerful vested interests and make space for change: forging alliances to campaign with impact and protect threatened activists.
Resourcing, expanding and adapting the tools of protection & empowerment
Human rights defenders can only be effective advocates if they are safe. As the threats they face grow and adapt, it is important to take stock of our tactics to support them: maintaining those that work, while expanding the range of tools at our disposal and adapting them to new realities.
Nefarious actors seek to divide, isolate and threaten those who hold them to account. Human rights defenders report that PBI’s unique model of holistic protective accompaniment acts as an effective counter to these strategies. According to defenders, our in-country presence paired with our ability to connect them with peers at the local and global level has been fundamental to advancing their missions.
“PBI's protective accompaniment provides the most effective protection. PBI are the ones who have prevented attacks on our lives”- Reinaldo Villalba Vargas, Colombian human rights lawyer
Such proven work needs to be maintained. We’re working hard to obtain the necessary funds, while exploring how to expand this protective presence to new countries and regions. Simultaneously, we are working on a plan to systemise and share our learnings and methodologies from over forty years of peacebuilding, advocacy, and protection of defenders at risk.
We are also implementing new tactics to support and empower defenders. Through the Scottish Human Rights Defenders Fellowship, we are able to provide advocacy support, respite and wellbeing to more activists from more countries. We are also providing work experience opportunities to exiled defenders and returned field volunteers. Last year alone, human rights defenders from Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Kenya, Nepal, Indonesia, Senegal and Zimbabwe benefited from these schemes.
Your support drives us forward
2024 will be a big year for democracy, but also for PBI, as our global alliance works on a new five-year strategic plan to approve at our General Assembly this Autumn.
In our UK office, we will be working to maintain momentum from the campaign wins of last year in the lead up to a General Election. We will welcome tens of human rights defenders to London for respite, training and advocacy. And we will bridge global legal expertise with front line communities and activists.
We can really only do this with your support. Together, we are so much stronger.
