The Human Dimension Implementation Meeting (HDIM), Europe’s largest annual human rights and democracy conference, is organized every year by the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) as a platform where 57 OSCE participating States and OSCE structures meet civil society to take stock of the implementation of the human dimension commitments. Here, civil society can challenge states and institutions, discuss problems in the field of democracy and human rights, share good practices and make recommendations for further improvements.
On Thursday 24 September, NHC participated in a side event with FIDH and the HRHF called “Shrinking spaces: human rights defenders in the OSCE region more than ever at risk.” Activists from Russia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine presented the deteriorating trends in their respective countries. Proposed or effective legislation complicates the work of civil society actors, and an increasing number are subject to harassment and arrest. The NHC presented the organisers’ joint recommendations to participating States on what they can do to protect human rights defenders at risk, and put forward three concrete examples the NHC is involved in: The Natalia Estemirova Documentation Center, the campaign for a global Magnitsky Mechanism, and the discussions with the Norwegian MFA on an arrangement that can provide temporary refuge for human rights defenders at risk.
Read also the statement from the members of the European Platform for Democratic Elections (EPDE), where also NHC is a member, who warns about the increasing harassment of citizens’ election observers in the ODIHR region. Click on this link to read the statement in full.
The NHC held interventions at the working sessions focusing on Independence of the judicial system and Independence of judiciary, integrity of judges and prosecutors and tolerance and non-discrimination. Click on the links below to read all NHC interventions at this year’s’ HDIM.