Dear friends,
On July 18, the Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA) launched Defending in Numbers: Reclaiming CIvic Space, Unbroken Voices, which analyses the situation of human rights defenders (HRDs) in Asia in 2023 and 2024, including the Philippines. The program launch was held at the Commission on Human Rights, sponsored by the CHR, FORUM-ASIA, and KARAPATAN.
In the launch, KARAPATAN scored the Marcos administration for its heightened attacks against human rights defenders and communities through illegal or arbitrary arrests, judicial harassment through trumped up criminal cases and terror laws, political imprisonment, enforced disappearance and red-tagging — all of which undermine civic space and democracy in the country. “The increased number of political prisoners in congested jails and prisons under Marcos, for instance, embody the continuing weaponization of the law against those who express dissent against his governance,” said KARAPATAN secretary general Cristina Palabay.
Please feel free to share the publication to friends and colleagues. Here is a briefer about the FORUM-ASIA publication:
Defending in Numbers: Reclaiming Civic Space, Unbroken Voices
The two years between 2023 and 2024 were marked globally by escalating armed conflicts, devastating humanitarian crises, and an alarming contraction of civic space. This trend was also evident in Asia, where the human rights landscape significantly deteriorated. Within this context, human rights defenders (HRDs) across the region played a crucial role in documenting human rights violations and advocating for social justice, often at great personal risk, including threats to the safety and wellbeing of themselves, their families and communities.
Defending in Numbers: Reclaiming Civic Space, Unbroken Voices analyses the situation of HRDs in Asia in 2023 and 2024, based on the monitoring and documentation of the violations they faced, as captured in the Asian HRD Portal. According to the Portal – managed by FORUM-ASIA – in 2023 and 2024, as many as 1,577 violations were committed against defenders across 23 Asian countries monitored. At least 3,716 defenders, their family members, organisations, and communities were affected by violations perpetrated by both state and non-state actors. More violations may be unreported.
Judicial harassment remained the most common violation committed against Asian defenders with 868 incidents documented in the period under review. It was followed by physical violence with 426 cases recorded, which alarmingly included 39 cases of targeted killings. Intimidation, threats, and censorship ranked the third most prevalent violation with 376 events. Environmental, land, indigenous, and community-based defenders faced 457 incidents of violations throughout 2023 and 2024, resulting the most at-risk group of defenders. WHRDs and those advocating for sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) rights followed with 419 recorded cases. Pro-democracy defenders (283 cases) and student and youth defenders (230 cases) were also disproportionately subjected to harassment and violence.
This is the sixth edition of Defending in Numbers (DiN), a biennial publication produced by FORUM-ASIA that identifies the main patterns of harassment and challenges that defenders confront within the region. DiN also displays emblematic case studies and information from HRDs that FORUM-ASIA has worked with, which exemplify the role that HRDs play in Asia, and the tremendous effort and risks that their work leads to.
The launch of DiN will provide the venue for a collective reflection of the situation of defenders in Asia, with a specific discussion on HRDs in in the Philippines, ahead of the mid-term report from the President Marcos. The sub-regional context of South Asia will also be reviewed, as well as insights from the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC), a civil rights movement advocating for the protection of civil, political, and economic rights of the Baloch people in Balochistan, Pakistan.
Read the report here: Defending in Numbers 2023-2024: Reclaiming Civic Space, Unbroken Voices
Thank you very much.
KARAPATAN Public Information Desk