Mr. Ed O'Donovan:

While I see the whistleblower protections as being effective to a certain extent, some of the risks faced by human rights defenders more broadly, and the industries that they are working in, can lead to reprisals against them that are not dealt effectively by current whistleblower protections. For instance, in terms of death threats and killings, we know that human rights defenders - and I am talking about people who are exposing human rights violations and protesting against land grabs and environmental degradation - tend to be killed at a far higher level than the traditional whistleblower in a corporate set-up. From that perspective, there needs to be a much broader stance taken on their protection. As I mentioned previously, all of these models exist. A number of agencies and organisations have been working on this issue for the past 20 or 30 years. It is about trying to get business and other actors to appreciate what these steps are, what the risks are and what kind of things they have to put in place to ensure that they are not playing a part in facilitating, or even having an awareness of, a situation which could create these circumstances.