Compromised space for unrepresented peoples at the United Nations
UNPO, together with its partners at the University of Oxford and Tibet Justice Center, has launched the report: ‘Compromised Space: Bullying and Blocking at the UN Human Rights Mechanisms’. The report documents how China, Russia, Iran and other repressive regimes are manipulating the United Nations human rights system and attack those seeking to hold them accountable for gross human rights violations perpetrated against minorities, indigenous communities and other unrepresented peoples.
According to the findings in the report, the systemic attack on the United Nations human rights system by these governments, led largely by China, Russia and Iran, includes efforts to deny civil society groups participatory status at the UN (so called “ECOSOC status”), to bully and block them when they are able to access the UN, to crowd out the UN space with “GONGOs” – government-sponsored organisations posing as NGOs – and to harass, intimidate and take reprisals against activists and their families, whether at home or abroad.
Among the indicative findings of the report is the fact that the Iranian regime regularly engages in practices designed to intimidate activists from their minority communities, even while they are operating within the United Nations buildings, and have taken out reprisals against the family members of these activists still living within the Islamic Republic of Iran.
See also:https://unpo.org/article/21583
