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Article

19 Jan 2022

Author:
Brian Dooley, Human Rights First

USA: Advocacy group calls on the Congress to pass legislation to enact HRDs Guidelines more effectively

"State Department’s Second Chance To Get HRD Guidelines Right", 13 January 2022

Ten years ago, I testified in the US Congress for Human Rights First on why the US government should issue guidelines to its embassies on engaging with human rights defenders... by March 2013 they finally produced some useful guidelines for US diplomats, modelled largely on those adopted by European countries a decade before...

The guidelines encouraged officials to maintain regular contact with HRDs, or possibly to attend their trials or visit them in detention, and otherwise explore ways to support and protect them ... but the State Department failed to adequately encourage its embassies to implement the suggestions...

[T]he State Department has now released updated guidelines ... [that] could act a great starting point for US officials at any embassy who want to connect with local civil society and activists. The challenge is to prevent these new standards from getting left on the shelf like the last ones. 

To guard against that, we and others are hoping Congress will pass legislation aimed at keeping the State Department focused on protecting HRDs, including requiring US embassies to post the guidelines on their websites in relevant languages in an invitation to local HRDs to engage with them...

The US government should use its power much more often to protect human rights defenders, not least at a local level where its embassies can offer much more consistent support to human rights defenders, and not just in countries that are adversaries of the US, but with its allies too.

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