Delivered by Lisa Majumdar
Thank you, Madame President, and thank you to the panelists for the discussion.
The Human Rights Council provides a critical space to enable and assist States’ responsibility to protect. As we have heard, civil society, too, is critical throughout numerous aspects of protection.
Civil society plays a unique role in helping local communities to develop peace building initiatives, to monitor threats to human rights and to organise themselves to use non-violent strategies to prevent violence.
A vibrant and open civil society, including a free media, with the capability to hold governments to account, is another critical tool in promoting transparency and accountability which is itself a key protection against atrocity crimes.
The international community can support civil society in playing this role in two ways. Firstly, by supporting and protecting local civil society. As the UN’s Secretary-General set out in his 2019 report on lessons learned in prevention, the first line of defence against atrocities tends to be local and national human rights organisations.
Secondly, recognizing the crucial role played by a vibrant civil society and free media in prevention of atrocities, the international community needs to stand ready to take action when civic space is curtailed. The resolution on the Council’s prevention mandate adopted in its 45th session articulated restrictions to civic space as an early warning sign of a deteriorating situation. Civil society cannot contribute to the prevention of atrocities if it is stifled and repressed.
CIVICUS encourages states to use civic space indicators in a systematic manner at the Human Rights Council in order to both fully operationalize its prevention mandate and to enable civil society to play its own crucial role. This includes raising civic space concerns through individual and joint State statements at the Council, thematic debates, resolutions, and the Universal Periodic Review process.
The responsibility to protect falls on States but every stakeholder has a critical role in its implementation. Civil society must be enabled, encouraged and supported to do its part.
We thank you.