By Payton Focht
Peaceful protests are essential for democracy and is a huge aspect of human rights. The Panel Discussion on the promotion and protection of human rights in the context of peaceful protests took place at the 26th meeting of the 48th session of the Human Rights Council.The panelists were all in agreement that the main threats to the right of assembly in today’s world are: new technologies, lack of capacity building, Covid-19, and the lack of accountability.
Technologies are increasingly being hijacked by government forces to create “blackouts”, preventing any communication to be established among protestors. In addition, there are reports of governments using technology to monitor and harass protesters, activists, and journalists. GICJ feels that this is a gross misuse of power and technology by the government and the international community needs to take active steps to ensure that this pattern does not continue to worsen.
The second issue that the panelists agreed on was the need for capacity-building to prevent government violence towards protesters. The Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, Clément Nyaletsossi Voule stressed the importance of experience-sharing and how the international community needs to come together to share successful practices for combatting state violence.The lack of officials’ accountability is an issue in many countries across the world. The use of force by many governments is extremely concerning. To address and fix this concerning issue, there must be accountability on the national and international levels.
The Covid-19 pandemic has wrongfully given governments an excuse to limit peaceful protests in the name of public health. While the crowd limits was seen as acceptable, the lack of sunset clauses has become an issue. Yuval Shany - Hersch Lauterpacht Chair in Public International Law echoed that assembly is essential, not a luxury and it is imperative that governments see it as such.
UN Police Adviser Luís Carrilho stated that the goal of the UN Police is to serve and protect with consistent and harmonized approaches across the world. He exposed the importance of appropriately-trained police officers that are able, if necessary to create a dialogue, offer mediation, or perform proactive de-escalation strategies if needed during a protest.
The UN Children’s Fund as well as the Child Rights Connect brought up important issues involving children and the right to protest. They emphasized that children are allowed to exercise the right of assembly and governments need to create an empowering and safe environment for children to do so. UN Children’s Fund noted that sometimes children are targeted for harm by governments during protests.
GICJ reiterates that peaceful protests are a pillar of democracy and rights to assembly should be protected. We have recorded grave violations of this right in Iraq and would like to shed light on this issue. In Iraq, there is an election on October 10th, and with a severe lack of trust in the government the people have protested to end impunity. There is record of the government targeting individuals that oppose them politically and they are being abducted and detained without due process. The international community must hold Iraq accountable for the crimes against protesters and must put an end to the violence and the disruption they are causing.
Justice, Human rights, Geneva, geneva4justice, GICJ, Geneva International Centre For Justice
