I have been asked to give a brief summary of the work of Front Line. I will speak for ten minutes following which I will take questions from members of the committee.
Front Line was established in 2001 and is just past its fifth birthday. We concentrate all our activities on human rights defenders at risk, that is, people who work non-violently for any or all of the rights enshrined in the universal declaration of human rights. That is how we define a human rights defender.
There is no organisation that concentrates all its activities on human rights defenders at risk — hence, the reason for the foundation of Front Line. Other organisations have programmes on human rights defenders but we felt there was a real need, which has been subsequently proven, for an organisation to work specifically and solely on human rights defenders at risk in a way that is fast, flexible and furious. We work equally on civil and political rights and economic, social and cultural rights and on the defenders who are at risk because they defend civil and political rights or economic, social and cultural rights.
We work with women defenders who face additional risks to men defenders because of their gender or their place in society. We work also with other defenders who work for marginalised people, such as indigenous people, gays-lesbians, transgender, refugees and so on. All human rights defenders who work on unpopular causes can be at risk. Since the 11 September 2001 attack, human rights offenders around the world are being targeted as terrorists because it suits some repressive governments to have an easy way to stop them challenging authority.
Front Line is an Irish-based international organisation made possible originally by a donation of €3 million from Denis O'Brien. We get support from various foundations, the Government and other governments.
Essentially, Front Line does a number of things, the first being research. We have more than 1,000 human rights defenders from many countries on our database. They are not always at risk. They go in and out of risk depending on the activity in which they are involved or what they are doing. We are in constant contact with those at risk on a daily basis.
We produce country reports. We have done reports on six countries — Brazil, the USA, Sierra Leone, Indonesia, Palestine and Rwanda. We produce two of these reports a year. We have also become involved in capacity building of human rights defenders in terms of security because no one was covering that area. We are a defender-led organisation. We provide what the human rights defenders say they need to protect them and increase their space to allow them operate.
There is a good deal of training going on throughout the world in the security area. The two areas we are dealing with is personal security and risk assessment on the one hand, and electronic security on the other. As members will be aware, governments around the world are monitoring e-mails, listening in to phone calls and seizing files and computers and human rights defenders are targeted in that way.
Human rights defenders are targeted in a variety of other ways — from lesser intimidation like threatening phone calls to denial of freedom of expression and freedom of movement, imprisonment and torture. Some of them have been killed. Family members are targeted. Some of them have lost their jobs because of their work, while others have been expelled from their flats. There is a range of ways in which governments try to silence human rights defenders. We also do a lot of training on-line on our website. There are 30,000 "hits" on our website a month, which is available in five languages — English, French, Spanish, Russian and Arabic. We also have the capacity in our Dublin office to work in those five languages.
We try to put human rights defenders in touch with each other because networking, both among themselves and with the international institutions that can help to protect them, is very important. Some members may be aware that every two years we have the Dublin platform, the biggest of its kind in the world. We bring over 100 defenders at risk to Dublin where they meet, share experiences and learn from each other. We do some training and we have people from the European Union and the United Nations present whom human rights defenders can meet. We also arrange meetings in the various regions to bring human rights defenders together.
It is important to reiterate that the Government has prioritised human rights defenders as a key area in foreign policy. Under the Irish Presidency of the European Union, Front Line lobbied for a prioritisation of human rights defenders in the Irish Presidency goals. This was agreed and during the Presidency the EU guidelines on human rights defenders were adopted. We get a sense of ownership about the issue of human rights defenders from the Government.
It is welcome that Irish parliamentarians and the Government are getting involved because we are talking about some of the bravest people in the world who are the modern day heroes and heroines. Last week a Saudi Arabian man came in to us who has been working for human rights in Saudi Arabia for several years. He has had three back operations because of his torture. He has gone back to face another operation on his neck and has recently been diagnosed with a brain tumour. He is having an operation on 16 March, yet he continues to do the work. That story is repeated throughout the world but that work goes unnoticed and unrecognised. I appeal to the members to make human rights defenders one of their key issues as a committee because it is one the Government has prioritised.
We run a small grants programme. We give grants to human rights defenders for their security. They get money for mobile phones and computers to ensure they can tell us when they are in danger. We often get text messages or e-mails to the effect that somebody is attacking an office or whatever. We provide money for work such as building walls around offices. The Irish priest, Kevin O'Hara, asked us for money to build a wall around his office in Nigeria, which we provided. We give money for bullet-proof vests, camera equipment in offices, security reinforcement for homes, steel doors and so on. We provide money for anything that will enhance the security of somebody working at risk. We also send lawyers to trials and we have sent journalists to trials.
Advocacy is a huge part of what we do. We work in particular through the Government. The Department of Foreign Affairs has set up an urgent mechanism through which we can work where if somebody is in serious danger it can be raised immediately with the European Union and quick action taken because ultimately it is political will that will protect them.
We also have an internship in the UN with the UN Special Representative on Human Rights Defenders. Someone will go to work in the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Office of the Special Representative on Human Rights Defenders for six months and then comes back to us.
We have started to take different actions directly as a result of defenders. In eastern Congo, for example, where human rights defenders are at risk, there were no computers or Internet cafes. They had to make a perilous journey through several checkpoints and cross over to Bujumbura in Burundi to get out information. We set up a satellite office in Bukavu and have a Congolese employee who is training the human rights defenders in the use of technology and how to fix their computers if they break down because there is little use in having computers if they do not work. The second stage of the training is in security. That is something we will be rolling out next in Sudan.
Something positive could be done arising out of this meeting. Yesterday in Iran, 1,000 women demonstrated but they were beaten up and the demonstration was broken up by the police. I will not go into the detail but it was supposed to be a peaceful, silent sit-in protest by women holding signs because yesterday was International Women's Day. The security forces arrived, filmed the women — obviously, they will call them in later — and then beat up many of them. It would be welcome if the committee could take up that issue.
I want to mention another horrific case of an Uzbeki man — I will make the information available — whose four children and two of his nephews have been imprisoned and tortured because of his work. That horrendous case shows the extent to which the security forces will use the family of a human rights defender to get information. Uzbekistan is a difficult country with which to take up such an issue but I would be grateful if the committee could do something about it.
