Women's human rights defenders under threat – podcast transcript

Reporters and presenters:

LF: Liz Ford
DF: Daysi Flores
NF: Nimalka Fernando
MAAK: Maryam Abdulhadi al-Khawaja
TB: Tania Branigan
PMN: Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka
KM: Khouloud Mahdhaoui

DF She’s now convicted of the crime of defamation because he’s a very powerful man. He sued her and he won. There is no justice here.

LF That is the voice of Daysi Flores, a human rights defender from Honduras, and she’s referring to the case of Gladys Lanza, a human rights activist from the country.

DF Women are really in a very bad position in the whole world but in countries like Honduras, where we actually face no rights at all, women have the worse part. And women who speak up are really worse.

LF Gladys Lanza was convicted for defending a woman who accused a government official of sexual harassment. Lanza is just one of the many recent examples of what appears to be a systematic targeting of human rights defenders. For women, this can often have a more sinister dimension.

My name is Liz Ford, and in this edition of the Guardian’s Global development podcast we look at the challenges faced by women human rights defenders around the world.

In 1995, 189 governments signed a historic agenda for women’s empowerment. The Beijing Platform for Action, agreed at the fourth world conference on women, made a specific call for women engaged in the defence of human rights to be protected. Twenty years on, that call seems to be going unheeded.

NF I’m Nimalka Fernando from Sri Lanka. I have been a human rights activist for over 30 years. As a woman activist I was always portrayed as a bad woman, an evil woman. The newspapers’ editors would write or refer to us as sex workers or charlatans. And the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation, in one of the programmes, titled [it] Stoning the Sinner Woman because I spoke about the rights of sex workers, I spoke about the manner in which we have the right to go and work in the UN openly, transparently. They discussed the ways and means of how to kill us, kill me and kill other human rights defenders while cooperating with the UN.

LF As we reach 20 years since Beijing, many believe we are experiencing a global crackdown on human rights defenders and specifically those who are fighting for women’s rights.

MAAK My name is Maryam Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, I’m a Bahraini human rights defender and a co-director of the Gulf Centre for Human Rights. At the Gulf centre we focus mainly on working with human rights defenders’ protection training and so on. And we cover the same countries: the Gulf Cooperation Council six and then also Iraq, Iran, Yemen and Sierra, so we keep quite busy. We’ve seen the systematic targeting of human rights defenders in all the countries that we cover. And they range from anything from extrajudicial killings to judicial harassment to defamation and so on, the list is quite long.

KF Not long after the conviction of Gladys Lanza in Honduras, female activists in China were detained in what for many were very surprising circumstances. Tania Branigan is the Guardian’s China correspondent.

TB There’s been a much broader crackdown on activism in China over the last couple of years so we’ve seen a lot of people detained and charged and convicted. But what’s very striking in this case is that these young women were simply planning to put up stickers campaigning against sexual harassment. Now of course sexual harassment is against the Chinese law as it stands. This wasn’t a big organisation, they see themselves very much as individuals I think, [judging] from my previous interviews with them. And as I said, they were simply trying to highlight the problems women face on public transport. And yet they were detained even before that international women’s day event could take place, just a couple of days before.

One of their lawyers said, “Look, the government’s long talked about the protection of women’s rights and the promotion of gender equality, and that’s just what they’re doing.” I think it has to be seen, as I said, in the context of this broader tightening of activists of all kinds. We’ve definitely seen more detentions and more arrests and convictions. And the concern now is that because they’ve been formally detained, they weren’t just taken away by police, but they’re going through a formal legal process now that we may yet see some of them charged. And if they’re charged in China they’re very, very likely to be convicted.

LF Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, the executive director of UN Women, believes that the wave of extremism around the world has definitely impacted on the way women’s human rights defenders – in fact, women who make any kind of stand at all – are treated.

PMN The wave of extremism that we have seen, which is accompanied by extraordinary violence, has definitely impacted on women. Not only is the violence that we see traumatising communities, men as well, but it also particularly targets women almost for additional violence and humiliation. Because I think it is also accompanied by a stand that says, “How dare you get involved as a woman?”

MAAK Most of the targeting that we’ve seen being used against women human rights defenders we’ve seen being used against the men human rights defenders as well. Anything from the attacks here in protest, imprisonment, assault, torture – both physical, psychological and sexual. The long sentences that are disproportionate to the charges that people are facing. So it’s a very, very long list of tools of oppression that are being used by the government.

LF While both women and men human rights defenders are coming under increasing attack from governments, women from countries where they have little or no rights can be more vulnerable than their male counterparts.

PMN Sometimes the law that defends all the citizens in specific countries will not be as protective of women as it is of men who are also human rights defenders, which means that they are much more exposed than their male counterparts. Women are killed, in many cases they were brutalised by rape. When they are captured they would also be tortured in a specific way.

KM I’m Khouloud Mahdhaoui, journalist, audio-visual activist and president of Chouf Minorities, an LGBT organisation. So basically two LGBT women, an activist in Chouf and also a board member of the organisation, have been attacked last month. First one was raped by a man who threatened her by knife to her throat and beat her on the face. The second one was physically and verbally [attacked] by two men. We notice an obvious rise of these attacks recently. This week, during the last days of the World Social Forum, activists from Chouf and other LGBT organisations have been attacked by a group of people inside the university campus where the World Social Forum itself was held. The rise of the attacks is also parallel to the courage of activists who are not afraid any more to fight for their right and to call for the abolition of law 230, [which] criminalises homosexuality.

LF Daysi Flores.

DF Sexual assault, it seems like a way of controlling our bodies and controlling ourselves. After the coup the first thing they actually did was to ban the morning-after pill, and they keep on controlling our bodies like that. Three women were actually killed [recently], they were taken out of the car and killed just over there in the street. And when we were demonstrating there, cars just passed by telling us that they were murdered because they were a whore or because we have to go back home and stay home in order not to be killed and things like that. And people think that way. And still women keep in fighting.

LF Sexuality is not the only way that women human rights defenders are being targeted. Maryam Abdulhadi al-Khawaja believes that governments are finding new ways to try to silence activists.

MAAK One of the things that I think is very interesting is the unconventional methods that regimes have now learned to use that don’t get as much international attention. Like, for example, preventing sons and daughters of human rights defenders from getting birth certificates, for example, so they become stateless. Or targeting activists through sentencing, which makes their work, of course – and travelling, and their right to movement – much more difficult, which has been the case in my case.

LF The extent of the targeting has at times caused many women human rights defenders to question their work. Let’s hear from Nimalka Fernando.

NF There is mental trauma. There are times when we ourselves question whether what we are doing is wrong. There are periods when we have to remain silent because it will have implications [for] our families. So they use these methods to silence us and to divert our attention from actually raising these issues. It becomes so personal sometimes you are involved in trying to defend yourself, and at times this can divert you from actually handling the issue. So I think when they become personal what we try to do is not take it as a personal attack, but to look at it as something that is coming from the system.

LF But why are these attacks allowed to continue? As well as the Beijing Platform for Action, the majority of UN member states have ratified a raft of other international conventions to empower women and protect their rights. One of them is the convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women, or Cedaw. Cedaw was adopted in 1979 by the UN general assembly, and has been described as an international bill of rights for women. But ratifying a convention is not always enough. For example, Honduras has ratified the agreement, but does not recognise the committee that monitors compliance to the convention and, therefore, cannot be held accountable to it.

DF Before the coup d’état we were like going in the path of having the democratic state and just building some laws within the women’s movement and trying to get those laws according to the Cedaw convention. But those laws have just been sat there. They’re just sitting there. They’re not working for us any more after the coup. And they had a lot of challenges before. But now they government has actually shut the doors of the civil society, particularly women’s movement.

MAAK I think accountability is at the forefront of what needs to happen. When we’re talking about resolutions being passed like the resolution on women human rights defenders and on human rights defenders in general, that’s a good first step. But if they’re not implemented, then it’s nothing more than just lip service. It’s very important that these governments are held accountable. When you have governments like the Bahraini government, the Saudi government, the Egyptian government who are active participants in the Human Rights Council getting away with targeting women human rights defenders and human rights defenders in general, it really puts this at the forefront of the issues. Well, OK, we passed resolutions – but then what next? How do you actually enforce these mechanisms to hold these governments accountable when they do target women human rights defenders and human rights defenders in general?

TB A number of people have expressed concern about this case in particular, and that’s quite striking actually because, very often, when you see detentions it really sort of goes unnoticed or under the radar.

LF Tania Branigan, our China correspondent.

TB In this case we’ve had the British government calling for their immediate release. We’ve had Samantha Power, the US ambassador to the UN, speaking out and saying they really should be let go and saying that the charge they were being held on, which was creating a disturbance, was really just a pretext for punishing them for the issues they were raising. And the EU has also spoken out. But China has been very clear in saying we think this is an issue of our judicial sovereignty, we don’t think it’s anything to do with you. Don’t get involved, basically.

I think what’s very striking about these detentions as well is of course that they happened just before International Women’s Day, that they happened as nations were meeting at the UN to talk about the challenges facing women internationally, and to talk about the fact that it’s 20 years this year since the big Beijing meeting on women, and the Beijing Declaration. Now obviously there were questions at the time about how strong that declaration was. There are concerns this year about whether it will be watered down and so forth. But I think a lot of people have really felt quite strongly that there’s this real disconnect or this very jarring conjunction of these detentions set against plans to mark the 20th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration.

LF 2015 also marks the deadline for the millennium development goals and the launch of a new set of targets, the sustainable development goals. The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, says the 17 goals must uphold human rights and promote the free, active and meaningful engagement of civil society.

PMN Overall, with the sustainable development goals, what is still remaining now is to finish the negotiations. But it’s actually bigger than just violence against women. It is also an issue that must arise where we focus on all aspects of human rights.

MAAK There’s two ways of looking at it. It’s always an issue of well, if you separate the two, if you look at women human rights defenders as being a separate issue to human rights defenders in general, are you actually risking making it easier for governments who will say, “We’ll deal with human rights defenders on one hand. And women human rights defenders are a separate issue so we don’t necessarily have to deal with that right now.” So we do have the risk of creating that kind of environment, which I think is very problematic. It’s very important to reinforce the idea that women rights and women human rights, the protection of women human rights defenders, should come hand in hand with human rights in general, and the protection of human rights defenders in general. They should not be seen as a separate issue at all.

PMN It is an issue under the goal that deals with women because in that goal there’s also the issue of violence against women. It also is an issue where we are looking at women in the rule of law, because what happens is that the rule of law where the rule of law exists is set aside, because this violence against women is not only perpetrated by non-state actors; sometimes it is state actors, which means that countries violate their own laws. So we do need to work with the human rights, established human rights bodies in those countries – where those bodies exist – to take the issue of women in a particular way, and to show that women are facing a particular kind of violence.

LF Goal five calls for an end to all forms of discrimination against women and girls everywhere, but will this next set of goals make any difference

?PMN It’s a mentality of patriarchy that sees women as lesser beings and therefore they have no rights to stand up. Whether they are standing up in countries that are more democratic where there is rule of law; or in countries where women are much more exposed because the laws in human rights protection is not as strong.

LF Daysi Flores believes the case of Gladys Lanza is the government’s way of sending a direct message to women human rights defenders.

DF This is actually a warning. They are actually telling us that they have tools to silence us. Even though they’re not really achieving the silence of Gladys Lanza. In the opening statement the lawyer actually said that they wanted to set a precedent for women who work in this kind of organisation, that’s how he referred about us.

PMN In one way we have to be pushing for perpetrators to be brought to book, but on the other end which is the first prize? It’s actually to defend the women, so that they do not have to go through this kind of violence in the first place.

LF The consensus is that women’s economic empowerment is what is most needed to bring about lasting change. Let’s hear from Khouloud Mahdhaoui in Tunisia.

KM What is needed to be done both nationally and globally is to show women their financial independence. In fact, many of them can’t even report attacks because they might find themselves on the street if they do. Sustainable development goals can help women financially and give them an opportunity to ensure their independence from the family and especially from the father. It will give more freedom and security to female activists.

PMN A critical mass of women with economic means is important to shift women and to reach a tipping point of the number of women that are living above the poverty line and are able to make their own decisions.

LF To put these measures in place what is needed are the finances and resources, and also for governments to agree globally on the scale of gender inequality. How can it be done?

PMN We need a lot of advocates for that because it’s almost like woman’s issues are a micro enterprise of the global agenda. And yet this is the global agenda of the majority of humanity. There’s a disconnect between everybody agreeing how big are the issues that impact on women and the amount of resources that are therefore allocated for this agenda that everybody agrees is very big. It cuts across, it arises in every endeavour of life. I try to emphasise to women that we actually have to treat this as a global phenomena. The consequences for women are different in different countries. And in the review of 20 years of Beijing that comes across very strongly, that one thing that has held us back in the last 20 years has been the stereotypes about women; it’s been the attitudes; it’s been the norms and the lack of will, or sometimes strategy among ourselves, as women’s movements, to fight – specifically – those attitudes. I think we’ve fought some of the things that were more tangible, such as access to health services and so on. But maybe the inability to overcome the intangibles has meant that, from generation to generation, we’ve seen the world changing but [the] mentality of most of the men that we have to deal with not changing.

LF In the struggle for gender equality, women’s human rights defenders face working against age-old stereotypes and also with the insurmountable tasks of attempting to transform one of the oldest institutions in human history – that of patriarchy.

PMN We actually have to remove the wall of patriarchy within which we have tended maybe to try and survive and have the whole world adapting to a world without patriarchy rather than women trying to survive better within patriarchy.

LF In Honduras, Gladys Lanza is feeling the power of that system. On 26 March she was sentenced to 18 months in prison for defamation. That’s all for this edition of the Guardian’s Global development podcast. My thanks to our guests Daysi Flores, Maryam Abdulhadi al-Khawa, Nimalka Fernando, Tania Branigan, Khouloud Mahdhaoui, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, and thank you to our producer, Kary Stewart. All of our programmes are available on the Guardian’s website at theguardian.com/global-development and on iTunes, SoundCloud and all podcasting apps. My name is Liz Ford. Thanks for listening and goodbye.