Human Rights Protections and Accountability in a Changing World

• Date
• October 23, 2025
• Speaker
• Binaifer Nowrojee
• Venue
• University of California, Berkeley School of Law
• Location
• Berkeley, California

A public lecture by Binaifer Nowrojee at the University of California Berkeley Law School on October 23, 2025. Remarks as prepared for delivery.

Dear friends, colleagues, members of the faculty, and other guests.

It is a pleasure to be here at the University of Berkeley, and to speak to you today on the importance of the work that human rights defenders do in fighting for and protecting humanity's core values.

We owe our fundamental freedoms to human rights defenders.

The rights that we enjoy, often take for granted, weren't bestowed to us from above, as if they were some gift or act of charity.

They were the result of the struggles from below, often waged in the most challenging contexts and against the steepest odds.

The right of women to vote, the right of workers for decent pay and working conditions; the freedom to speak, protest, or choose who rules over you; the ability for children to go to school, or the sick to access health care-these are all rights that are widely accepted today, but did were not recognized just a few decades ago.

Although they may not have been known as such at the time, the leaders of the freedom movements who fought against colonialism, apartheid, and other oppressive regimes were indeed human rights defenders.

Human rights defenders gave us one of the most important documents, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

One of its key drafters was Hansa Mehta, the Indian freedom fighter, feminist, and education leader.

Mehta embodied the key struggles of her moment. She founded and led the National Women-Workers Group, which organized non-violent, all-women protests against British colonial rule. For her work defending human rights, she was arrested and imprisoned three times.

The Universal Declaration did not come about spontaneously, but drew on other documents, like the "Indian Woman's Charter of Rights and Duties" that Hansa drafted a few years earlier, which affirmed human equality, rejected discrimination, and gave equal importance to both civil and political rights on one hand, and economic and social rights on the other.

Mehta gave us the very first Article of the Universal Declaration. During the drafting, Eleanor Roosevelt had proposed to affirm that, "All men are born free and equal in dignity and rights." She was echoing the words of the French and American declarations of the rights of men.

In principle, it was a statement of equality, but it excluded more people than it included. It was not a declaration of rights, but a set of entitlements, placing some people over others-particularly white, propertied men.

Mehta challenged Roosevelt's formulation and made a radical revision:

"All human beings," she affirmed, "are born free and equal in dignity and rights."

This simple, yet profound change affirmed the universality of human rights-transcending gender, race, class, and other distinctions. It stands the test of time, inclusive of all people of all identities.

Mehta's vision reminds us that human rights are not western construct, or a mark of superiority, nor some foreign creed imposed by the powerful.

They are an affirmation of the values that bind together our shared humanity.

Today, to be a human rights defender is an act of courage.

Across the world, we have seen governments try and silence defenders by subjecting them to surveillance, harassment, threats, and intimidation.

They have been abused online and smeared as "foreign agents," "traitors," and "terrorists."

In some places, they have been accused of thwarting development for demanding businesses abide by human rights principles, or subverting traditional values, if they insist on recognizing the full humanity of women and girls, of LGBTI+ people, and of members of lower castes.

Ever-tightening restrictions have been imposed on them to prevent them carrying out their crucial work.

They face threats to their organizations, which can be de-registered, denied the ability to receive funding, or wound up in legal cases that take years to reach a resolution-where the process itself is the punishment.

And, in the worst cases, they have been subjected to unjust prosecution, torture, disappearance, and even death.

Yet, despite these immense challenges, human rights defenders remain the custodians of our most cherished values and the drivers of equity and justice.

They do not just defend human rights but also advance them.

Even in the most repressive environments, they drive meaningful change. Their work leads to policy reforms, community empowerment, and the deepening of democratic participation.

And sometimes, their most profound impact is simply holding the line, or ensuring that hope endures for a more just and equal society, keeping alive an alternative vision to the bleak ambitions of authoritarian state power.

They can make differences in the most difficult contexts.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a vibrant and effective civil society network for human rights defenders is based in the east of the country.

To counter attacks on human rights defenders, they've devised an innovative strategy that they call the "SMS cooking pot."

It's simple and effective. When local authorities arbitrarily detain activists, particularly in more remote areas, the network comes into action-mobilizing other defenders.

They quickly share the contact details of the perpetrators and the chain of command above them. Then they encourage members of the network to send targeted messages-denouncing the detentions, affirming the rights of the defenders, and calling for their release.

This exposure and the concerted pressure brought to bear on those responsible for them raises the political costs of the detentions. They think twice the next time. They know they are being closely watched.

In more accessible parts of the country, the network springs into action within hours of an arrest or abduction, reaching police stations to provide legal and moral support while publicizing the attack.

These closely coordinated rapid responses have led to the releases of dozens of activists, including those detained in isolated locations, where they are often beyond the reach of public scrutiny.

In China, in the midst of the pandemic, human rights defenders found a remarkable way to continue their work while confined to their homes. They took a simple blank white sheet and hung it outside their windows.

Soon, this silent act of defiance-these individual images of white sheets, gently rippling each night-came together to create a nationwide wave of protest.

They proved successful in easing the extreme lockdowns and eventually moving away from the harsh zero-COVID-19 policy. When direct expression isn't possible, the defense of human rights can find other ways. Even a blank sheet can say everything.

Architects of Accountability

The work of human rights defenders can take a very long time to yield results. There are steps forward but also steps back. There are obstacles that stubbornly stand in their way, but which can also suddenly be swept aside to clear a path toward justice.

It is due to the persistent efforts of human rights defenders, many of whom worked at great personal risk to gather the evidence needed and push for the investigation, that former Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte is now standing trial at The International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity committed during his murderous "war on drugs."

In August, Colombian President Álvaro Uribe-who presided over the near-decade-long ruthless military campaign in the name of his own "war on drugs"-was sentenced for witness tampering. It was the first time in the country's history that a former president was convicted of a crime and sentenced-the result of decades of work by human rights defenders.

Human rights defenders are the architects of accountability. Brick by brick, they build cases, turning fear and silence into testimony, moving from impunity to justice.

It is precisely this work-this patient, dangerous labor of holding power to account-that makes them targets.

Where the powerful fear accountability, they also fear human rights defenders.

As the organization Front Line Defenders has documented, there were more than 2,000 attacks in more than 100 countries last year alone.

These numbers included the killings of 324 defenders for their human rights work across 32 countries.

Meanwhile, Global Witness has reported that that 146 environmental defenders were killed or disappeared in 2024, underscoring the grim reality that environmental and land rights defenders are the most targeted groups globally.

These figures are not the full picture. Many attacks against defenders remain undocumented, or unnoticed by the media and in other coverage.

In some situations, the attacks have become so depressingly common that even defenders themselves have started to normalize them as the unfortunate but unavoidable consequences of their work.

This is a reminder of how urgent it is that we defend the rights of those who have devoted their lives to defending the rights of others.

The means by which human rights defenders come under attack have become more sophisticated: they face a new frontier of threats.

Through advances in technology, governments and other actors now have powerful instruments to track defenders, surveil their work, hack into their devices, and harass them online.

Women human rights defenders are especially vulnerable-relentlessly subjected to vicious online forms of gender-based violence, doxxing, and other attacks designed to intimidate and silence them.

The deeply-rooted patriarchal norms that remain in evidence, across contexts, target them for their public work-seeking to stigmatize them and even threaten their families.

But technology is also being used by defenders as a tool for promoting rights and justice.

The wave of youth-led protests that we are seeing across Asia and Africa, which have either swept away repressive governments or continue to hold them to account, have been organized in digital spaces.

Where there have been restrictions on peaceful assembly, they have rallied in online spaces.

Where they cannot gather in person, they organize online-sometimes across vast distances, creating nationwide movements.

Where governments seek to stifle their voices, they find alternative platforms to speak out.

And where they face repression on the streets, unleashed by governments desperately resorting to violence to cling to power, these abuses are documented and exposed-live-streamed to thousands of people, and archived as evidence, to be used for accountability.

Strengthened Protection Measures

The crucial role that human rights defenders play in improving people's lives, fighting for our rights and holding the powerful accountable, also begs the question: who will defend the defenders?

To enable them to do this vital work, we need robust protection mechanisms. And these mechanisms need to be designed with the defenders' specific needs in mind, from the bottom up, ensuring they are sensitive and relevant to the contexts they work in-and designed to allow them to continue doing that work.

Traditional protection mechanisms were situated in and operated from the Global North. They deployed a limited set of protection measures across all contexts.

The default response to serious threats was to pull someone out of the field, either until the threats abated, or permanently in exile.

Repressive governments learned to exploit these situations. They discovered they didn't need to imprison or kill defenders to bring their work defending human rights to an end.

They could just apply enough pressure, through threats and intimidation, to force them to leave, and deter them from returning.

We need protection mechanisms that allow people to both get the security they need and continue their work on the ground.

The Role of Universities

Universities have an important role in supporting human rights defenders.

They can provide a temporary space for human rights defenders to not just seek safety and respite, but to carry out research, strategize, and train themselves before returning to their sites of struggle with renewed vigor.

Universities are places where human rights defenders from around the world can meet, learn from each other, and develop networks of support and solidarity.

They are also places where defenders can impart their own expertise to students and faculty alike, sharing what they've learned through their unique lived experiences as practitioners-and contributing to the fields of law, human rights, gender, and environmental studies.

Crucially, in these times, they can demonstrate through their example why it's important not to step back, or to surrender to fear.

Human rights defenders remind us that silence does not offer protection, and that anticipatory obedience is an admission of defeat.

And it's a tradition that Berkeley can draw up on, reaching back to its Free Speech Movement that arose 60 years ago, in support of the Civil Rights Movement and the anti-Vietnam war protests.

Our Continued Commitment

At Open Society, we are very proud to partner with Dr. Angana Chatterji, the founding chair of the Political Conflict, Gender and People's Rights Initiative here at the University of California-Berkeley.

Over the next five years, we look forward to our partnership enabling the Center and the university to protect rights defenders in bold, creative, and innovative ways-and to create pathways for accountability for those who are silencing rights defenders in some of the most repressive contexts in the world.

Open Society has a long history of supporting human rights defenders and their work.

We provide flexible, rapid, and long-terms support to those defending the defenders, especially in emergencies.

And we stand with those who risk so much to fight for open society values and to advance open society goals.

These commitments include the co-creation of holistic ecosystems for protection, on the ground where they are needed-in Colombia, Guatemala, the DRC, and elsewhere.

These ecosystems go beyond emergency responses and legal defense. They create a safer, more sustainable environment for rights defenders to be able to continue their work.

These protection strategies are community-based and address the specific needs of the defenders.

This model is inspired by the approach developed the Environmental Defenders Collaborative, which stands on four pillars:

1. Prevent-targeting the root causes and systemic failures
2. Protect-equipping defenders' communities, and organizations with the knowledge and tools to continue their work safely
3. Reveal-uncovering and documenting attacks, threats, corruption, collusion, and other assaults on defenders
4. Redress-holding the perpetrators accountable, and provide healing to the victims of trauma and violence

Through this framework, we work with communities and organizations to mitigate the risks to defenders, deliver comprehensive protection support, leverage accountability mechanisms, and pursue strategic litigation.

At the same time, we amplify narratives to build public support for human rights defenders and promote the importance of their work.

And we help expose the political economies that lie behind the attacks on them.

To cite just two examples of this work:

• We have supported "rest and respite shelters" for defenders in Ghana, Senegal, Nepal, and Japan. These are places of temporary relocation for them, where they can find the space to breathe without fear, but stay close to home, connecting with other defenders, and developing strategies together.
  
• We have also created fellowships for young lawyers in South Asia, ensuring that knowledge of the field is transferred and legal aid is sustained to be able to fight against the criminalization of defenders. These fellowships are also an investment in the next generation of human rights lawyers and civic leaders.

The protection of human rights defenders is one of the key pillars of our own efforts to not just promote human rights but also reimagine their future.

It stands alongside our work on countering violence and creating safer communities, advancing progressive drug policy reform to develop humane alternatives, developing new legal pathways for migration that are safe and dignified, and taking on emblematic cases that deliver major breakthroughs with strategic litigation.

Eight decades ago, when Hansa Mehta was part of the drafting committee of the Universal Declaration, she spoke of the importance of that moment, the inauguration of a new era of rights where everyone, everywhere would be guaranteed the same freedoms and protections.

"To create a new world," she said, "it is necessary to create a new way of thinking."

That's our task today, when defending human rights has become more difficult, but also more necessary.

Thank you.