Ms Karol Balfe:

I thank Deputy Brady for raising the issue of human rights defenders. It is an important issue in many countries across the globe. Front Line Defenders highlighted in 2020 that 333 human rights defenders were killed doing their work. That is a very shocking figure. These are the people who are often at the coalface of injustice. They are often the ones who are working with communities, deeply embedded with them, fighting for issues such as gender equality, peace and human rights. They are experiencing the most brutal forms of retaliation by being killed for the work they do. I thank the Deputy for highlighting that important issue.

These matters arise in the broader context of global restrictions on civil society spaces. Attacks on human rights defenders are not happening in isolation but are a part of a broader trend whereby states are bringing in increasingly restrictive and oppressive legislation and policy to restrict civil society's work more broadly. Civicus has classified that in the past couple of years, 111 countries have brought in such restrictive legislation. According to its categorisation, only 3.4% of the globe live in fully open civil society spaces. That is a shocking fact to take back and consider in the context of how we see these issues.

Covid-19 has, of course, only made the situation worse because emergency powers have been introduced in a number of countries. States have, unfortunately, used those emergency powers to restrict further the work of human rights defenders and civil society. It is also important to highlight that there are gendered aspects to attacks on human rights defenders. All human rights defenders experience particular attacks, but women experience different types of attacks because of the work that they do with communities and challenging social norms around gender inequality.

As well as the physical threats and killings that they face alongside male human rights defenders, they also face slurs about their name, stigmatisation, discrimination, sexual assault and sexual violence because of the work they do. It is very important to note that these attacks, much like other levels of gender-based violence, can increase during conflict situations, so it is an important area.

In regard to what Ireland can do, I have been a champion of this around the civil society space and that has been very welcome through the various UN resolutions and initiatives that it has pushed there. There is an opportunity with the ongoing membership of the UN Security Council because, in the Security Council, we are not seeing civil society systematically included and shaping the policies that have a huge and detrimental impact on their lives. There is a very important way that Ireland can bring civil society and human rights defenders into the Security Council space. Major decisions are being made about military responses in countries without consulting those human rights defenders and civil society actors. One important thing they need to consider when doing that is that they factor in reprisals against human rights defenders who engage with the Security Council, and that they engage fully with UN guidelines on this to make sure human rights defenders do not experience further threats and attacks because of that advocacy.