Countering narratives against HRDs

Countering narratives against HRDs

The APF Regional Action Plan on Human Rights Defenders (RAP) highlights the need to counter vilification, defamation and smear campaigns often endured by HRDs when carrying out awareness-raising activities for them. Smear campaigns, as well as discourses that legitimize the actions of aggressors, have a grave impact on HRDs and their work. Such narratives can change attitudes towards HRDs, leading to loss of support for their work, hindering protection efforts and even motivating new aggressions.

Some steps to developing an effective strategy in this regard, include:

  • Investigating how the public perceives and how the media portrays HRDs and their work.
  • Bringing actors together outside the human rights’ space, such as journalists, politicians, and public personalities, to examine narratives on HRDs and discuss possible approaches and strategies for a narrative change with those groups.
  • Consider using positive narratives when communicating about them (discussed in more detail in the next section), including highlighting the values HRDs protect rather than the individual actions they perform.

Positive narratives on HRDs

Narratives on HRDs are often negative, including focusing on obstacles they face, attacks and reprisals they are subject to. While it is certainly important to highlight the difficulties that HRDs suffer to invite public scrutiny, this type of discourse can also have the detrimental effect of normalising violations of HRDs rights.

Therefore, a change of discourse becomes useful, and necessary, so that messages can reach a wider audience and have a stronger impact.

Some top tips are:

Focus your narrative on the tangible benefits and importance of the work of HRDs, as well as on their achievements and objectives, not on the dangers and risks they face.
Focus your narrative on the tangible benefits and importance of the work of HRDs, as well as on their achievements and objectives, not on the dangers and risks they face.
Celebrate diversity, but also highlight the common desires, interests, characteristics and goals that humanity has in common and that are being promoted by HRDs.
Tell the story of the HRD, don’t let your narrative be a response to your opponents.

ISHR have created a new guideline for crafting effective human rights narratives at the UN to best support the work of HRDs.

This builds from previous work from Protection International and a 2017 Roundtable entitled “Rethinking the protection of Human Rights Defenders”. The main objective of this event was to offer a participatory platform to strengthen the human rights movement by supporting critical reflection and creative thinking on ways to improve both the protection of HRDs at risk and, more generally, the upholding of the right to defend human rights.

How did we do?

Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders 2016

UN declaration on Human Rights Defenders (HRDs)

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