CIVICUS greatly welcomes the Council’s growing recognition of the crucial role civil society plays in facilitating the full realization of all human rights. In particular, we welcome the Council’s increased attention to the need to protect and promote the right to freedom of assembly to effectively engage with a range of stakeholder on pressing rights issues.
However, despite continued development of a strong normative framework on freedom of assembly and the promotion of an enabling environment for civil society, the gap in reality and rhetoric remains stridently pronounced.
Across the globe, in both emerging and consolidated democracies, the exercise of the right to assembly remains gravely restricted by a combination of legislative and extra-legal measures that appear directly aimed at undermining the critical role public dissent plays holding governments to account.
Since December 2015, Ethiopian security forces have routinely used excessive and unnecessary lethal force to disperse and suppress peaceful protests in the Oromia region.
In Bahrain, despite repeatedly calls from a wide range of international and national civil society groups and independent experts, the government continues to use wanton violence to disperse and silence on-going protest movement.
Moreover, impunity for excessive and even lethal force against protestors remains rife. In Bangladesh, Sudan and Egypt, scores of individuals have been summarily killed while exercising their legitimate right to assemble.
We therefore warmly welcome the joint compilation report by the SRs Maina Kiai and Christof Heyns on the proper management of assemblies. We urge members and observer governments of the Council to take all necessary steps to ensure operationalization and domestication of the recommendations through robust national action plans in consultation with independent civil society groups.