Protecting Human Rights Defenders: Learning across Development, Humanitarianism and Human Rights

Posted on 8 May 2015

On Tuesday the 5th May CAHR hosted a one-day workshop on Risk and Protection supported by a grant from the Open Society Foundations Human Rights Initiative.

Protection and HRDs panel

The workshop examined the lessons, synergies and tensions that emerge when considering the approaches to protection that have been taken by human rights, development and humanitarian actors. The workshop sought to address how actors from adjacent fields could work together, and learn from each other, to build safe and enabling environments for HRDs and broader communities at-risk.

The workshop brought together practitioners, academics and donors from across fields. Speakers included representatives from the office of the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders, Amnesty International, Frontline, Global Witness, the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre and the Overseas Development Institute (Humanitarian Policy Group).

The learnings for the workshop will be written up as an article and will feed into CAHR's ongoing work on HRDs. For more information on the workshop content, see Risk and Protection workshop concept note (PDF , 193kb).

^{Image: from left to right, Jamshid Gaziyev (Office of the UN Special Rapporteur on HRDs); James Savage (Amnesty International UK); Andrew Anderson (Frontline Defenders); and Alice Nah (CAHR).}