15
Mar
2023
Watch
Women activism – human rights defenders related to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) (debate)
Madam President, human rights defenders should never be a target. Their work day in and day out is integral to our democracies, and it should be understood as such. Nobody should fear for their lives when they are defending human rights. Too many human rights defenders have lost their lives around the world. In my own country, in Ireland, we know the work that human rights defenders have done over the years when Irish women could not get their rights and sexual and reproductive health and helped them to deal with many difficult and tragic situations. We are still seeing human rights defenders doing this work in Europe, in places where the right to sexual and reproductive health and rights are under threat. We see places like Poland, where women’s rights to abortion was taken away, and where women fleeing from Ukraine who were raped cannot get the help that they need. Working in these most difficult conditions, we must applaud human rights defenders. Indeed, around the world, in places like Colombia, Kenya, Argentina, we see human rights defenders working in extraordinarily tough situations. That’s why, in my current work on the directive combating violence against women and domestic violence, my co-rapporteur Evin Incir and I have proposed that in the context of violence against women, violence against a human rights defender should be an aggravating circumstance. Today I call on the Council to agree to this proposal and to send a clear message that violence against human rights defenders is unacceptable. We must see this in the directive and we have to support those who stand up for democracy. Because what human rights defenders around the world are doing is, they are standing up for democracy. In many instances, of course, they are also standing up for gender inequality, they are fighting against the gender inequality that they see around the world, and we all know we have unfinished democracies and unfinished economies and human rights defenders are playing a pivotal role.