UN Action on Reprisals: Towards Greater Impact
Abstract
Human rights defenders and victims of human rights violations who engage with the United Nations (UN) can face intimidation and reprisals for doing so. How well does the UN track such cases? And what becomes of them after the UN raises an incident? These are the questions tackled in this report. It offers a quantitative analysis of the cases documented in the UN Secretary-General (SG)’s past 11 annual reports on intimidation and reprisals (published between 2010 and 2020) as well as, for a subset of those cases, of individual case developments and impact assessments provided by victims and their representatives. Such an analysis of the available data on intimidation and reprisals holds significant insights that can inform and strengthen the UN’s policies and action on reprisals.
Type
Authors
Researcher in Political Science
I am passionate about exploring and comparing human rights protection and state coercion in democratic as well as authoritarian contexts. For my work and studies, I have received various scholarships and awards, and spent considerable time abroad in countries on five continents. I was previously a visiting scholar at Stanford University, USA, and a research fellow at the Global Public Policy Institute, Germany, where I co-developed the Academic Freedom Index. I hold a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Freiburg.