Human Rights Defenders (HRDs) met recently in Geneva and identified key challengers, including suggestions for future direction of Frontline, the International Foundation for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders.
FORUM-ASIA’s representative Ruki Fernando attended Frontline’s Strategic Review meeting on 13 April. Also present was FORUM-ASIA’s representative to the United Nations in Geneva, Cecelia Jimenez.
Human Rights Defenders (HRDs) met recently in Geneva and identified key challengers, including suggestions for future direction of Frontline, the International Foundation for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders.
FORUM-ASIA’s representative Ruki Fernando attended Frontline’s Strategic Review meeting on 13 April. Also present was FORUM-ASIA’s representative to the United Nations in Geneva, Cecelia Jimenez.
Among the 10 participants at the meeting were HRDs from Zimbabwe, Palestine, Krygystan, Tunisia and the United States.
Said Ruki about the meeting: “It was a good opportunity to highlight issues faced by Asian defenders and establish better relations with Frontline, based in Dublin, which is an international NGO focusing fully on HRDs issues”.
Meanwhile, FORUM-ASIA also met with Melinda Ching Simon, the Human Rights officer to the Special Representative of the (UN) Secretary General on HRDs, at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Geneva.
In the meeting, FORUM-ASIA’s HRDs programme and the possibility of enhancing the use of the mechanism “Communications by the Special Representative” to respond to urgent situations faced by defenders were discussed.
Melinda, in turn, shared some key points to be taken into consideration by defenders when using this mechanism and also expressed interest to conduct training for Asian defenders ways to use this mechanism more effectively.
In a separate meeting, Kathrina, programme assistant to the Representative of the (UN) Secretary General on IDPs, was informed about FORUM-ASIA’s work on Internally-Displaced Persons (IDPs), especially the upcoming regional consultation on IDPs in Sri Lanka.
Kathrina discussed the possibility of the Representative or one of his staff attending FORUM-ASIA’s regional consultation, which was planned for July.
She suggested that emerging good practices related to IDPs from other regions, such as national policies, could be shared with participants at the regional consultation.
While, at the OHCHR, FORUM-ASIA met with Wan-Hea Lee, former Acting Regional Representative of the OHCHR in Bangkok, who is now the Secretary to the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
In Geneva, Ruki met with several other non-governmental organisations – International Service for Human Rights (ISHR) and Pax Romana – who have been working closely with FORUM-ASIA.
With the ISHR, who also works on HRDs issues, FORUM-ASIA discussed possible future collaboration, particularly in relation to the work ISHR is planning to do with the Asia Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions.
With Pax Romana, close partner and collaborator of FORUM-ASIA, the latter was updated about the work towards the Human Rights Council.
In a related development, FORUM-ASIA conducted a training for a group of Master’s students studying Peace and Conflict studies at the European University Center for Peace Studies.
About 10 students, including a former intern of FORUM-ASIA, participated in the training which covered the concept of who and what a defender does, the UN declaration on HRDs and the mechanisms available at regional and international levels for the protection of defenders.
