Dear Jeremy,

I am writing in support of EDM 1181 and ahead of tomorrow’s debate on women human rights defenders (HRDs) to urge you to make human rights defenders a priority and to develop a strategy that is Minister-led and well-funded.

As you will know, HRDs face arrest, harassment and even death at the hand of those who want to silence them. According to Amnesty International, since 1998 at least 3,500 people have been killed for their human rights work. 2017 was the deadliest year yet, with the death toll climbing to over 300. In addition to the high rate of murders in 2017, thousands of activists were detained on fabricated charges, subjected to lengthy, expensive and unfair legal processes or sentenced to long prison terms.

In the Middle East and North Africa, HRDs faced charges relating to terrorism, state security and espionage. For example Azza Soliman a lawyer, long-standing Women Human Rights Defender, and co-founder of the Centre for Egyptian victims of torture and arbitrary detention. She campaigned for the right not to be harassed at work, not to be beaten and not to be raped. She has been arrested several times, and harassed by the Egyptian authorities and the media for defending women’s rights.

Today, Azza is facing three trumped up charges, is banned from travel, and has had her assets frozen. She risks imprisonment of up to 15 years for her activities as a human rights defender. She and other activists like her are targeted because of their activism, with women also targeted because of their gender too.

Narges Mohammadi is a distinguished Iranian human rights defender, a supporter of the anti-death penalty campaign and vice president of the Centre for Human Rights Defenders in Iran. The courts sentenced her to sixteen years’ imprisonment, using interviews she gave to international media and her March 2014 meeting with the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy as evidence. In September 2016, Branch 26 of the Tehran Appeals Court upheld the 16-year prison sentence for the charges of: membership in the Defenders of Human Rights Center, assembly and collusion against national security, and for propaganda against the state.

Narges has suffered years of harassment, punctuated by intermittent periods in detention. This has inflicted a devastating toll on her health and has emotionally scarred her two young children. Narges has been repeatedly hospitalised since being imprisoned in May 2015. She is critically ill, suffering from a pulmonary embolism and a neurological disorder that has resulted in seizures and temporary partial paralysis.

In Vietnam, the government staged a systematic campaign against bloggers, academics and citizen journalists in 2017, with activists arrested, charged, labeled “enemies of the state” and given jail terms of up to ten years and addition time under house arrest. In November 2017, 22-year-old, Nguyen Van Hoa, was sentenced to seven years in prison for reporting on the oil spill by Formosa (a Taiwanese-owned company) which the government sought to cover up.

Human rights defenders like Azza, Narges and Nguyen should be celebrated for their wok, not persecuted, and I hope the UK will show global leadership by developing a strategy that reflects that particular challenges faced by women and those in the LGBTI community.

Yours sincerely,