EurActiv: Tusk considers extraordinary summit over migrant boat disasters

Source:
http://www.euractiv.com/sections/global-europe/tusk-considers-extraordinary-summit-over-migrant-boat-disasters-313902

Tusk considers extraordinary summit over migrant boat disasters

  

Published: 20/04/2015 - 08:05

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Dead migrants on Italian beach. [Reuters]

European Council President Donald Tusk is considering calling a special summit of EU leaders on the refugee crisis in the Mediterranean after a fishing boat capsized overnight off the Libyan coast, killing as many as 700 migrants.

Tusk tweeted that he was talking to EU leaders, the European Commission and its foreign service on "how to alleviate (the) situation" after the lasts tragedy.

After consultation, Tusk's spokesman said yesterday (19 April), the former Polish prime minister would decide on a possible extraordinary summit.

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini urged European governments to support action to protect migrants in the Mediterranean, following one of the worst migrant boat disasters over the weekend.

"We have said too many times 'never again'. Now is time for the European Union as such to tackle these tragedies without delay," Mogherini said in a statement. "We need to save human lives all together, as all together we need to protect our borders and to fight the trafficking of human beings."

"It seems we are looking at the worst massacre ever seen in the Mediterranean," UNHCR spokeswoman Carlotta Sami said.

Pope Francis urged EU leaders to "act decisively and quickly to stop these tragedies from recurring".

A Bangladeshi survivor who was helicoptered to hospital in Sicily put the numbers on board at 950. She said 200 women and children and nearly 50 children were among them, according to prosecutors in the city of Catania.

EU foreign ministers will discuss the issue at a meeting in Luxembourg today (20 April), Mogherini said.

28 people were rescued in the incident, which happened just off Libyan waters, south of the southern Italian island of Lampedusa, Antonino Irato, a senior official from the Italian border police, told television station RaiNews24.

He said 24 bodies had been recovered.

If confirmed, the death toll would bring the total number of dead since the beginning of the year to more than 1,500.

The new deaths fuelled calls for a stronger response from Europe to the increasingly deadly migrant crisis playing out in the Mediterranean. International aid groups and Italian authorities have criticised Europe's so-called "Triton" border protection operation, which recently replaced a more comprehensive Italian search-and-rescue mission.

"A tragedy is unfolding in the Mediterranean, and if the EU and the world continue to close their eyes, it will be judged in the harshest terms as it was judged in the past when it closed its eyes to genocides when the comfortable did nothing," Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said.

Italian officials said navy and coast guard vessels, as well as merchant ships in the area and a Maltese patrol boat, were involved in the search and rescue operation, which was being coordinated by the Italian coast guard in Rome.

"They are literally trying to find people alive among the dead floating in the water," he added.

There was still no decision on where the survivors and the bodies that had been recovered would be taken.

The boat is believed to have capsized when the migrants shifted to one side of the overcrowded vessel as a merchant ship approached.

"The first details came from one of the survivors who spoke English and who said that at least 700 people, if not more, were on board. The boat capsized because people moved to one side when another vessel that they hoped would rescue them approached," said Carlotta Sami, a spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Systematic slaughter

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said Europe was witnessing "systematic slaughter in the Mediterranean".

"How can we remain insensible when we're witnessing entire populations dying at a time when modern means of communications allow us to be aware of everything?" Renzi said at a political event in Mantua.

On his way back to Rome, where he was expected to give a news conference later, Renzi spoke by telephone to French President François Hollande.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said, "We Europeans risk damaging our credibility if we are not able to prevent these tragic situations which are happening every day."

The leader of the anti-immigrant Northern League party, Matteo Salvini, who has made migration one of the centrepieces of his political agenda, called for an immediate naval blockade of the coast of Libya.

The lawless state of Libya has left criminal gangs of migrant smugglers a free hand to send a stream of boats carrying desperate migrants from Africa and the Middle East.

Around 20,000 migrants have reached the Italian coast this year, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) estimates. That is fewer than in the first four months of last year, but the number of deaths has risen almost nine-fold.

In 2013, Italy’s previous government initiated the search-and-rescue operation "Mare Nostrum" or "Our Sea" after hundreds drowned in an incident off the coast of Lampedusa.

But Italy scaled back the mission after failing to persuade its European partners to help meet its operating costs of €9 million a month amid divisions over whether the mission was unintentionally encouraging migrants to attempt the crossing.

That made way for the European Union's border control mission, Triton. However Triton, which has a much smaller budget and narrower remit, has been criticised by humanitarian groups and Italy as inadequate to tackle the scale of the problem.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres said: "This disaster confirms how urgent it is to restore a robust rescue-at-sea operation and establish credible legal avenues to reach Europe. Otherwise people seeking safety will continue to perish at sea."

Worst tragedy yet

The disaster was the latest in a growing catalogue of mass drownings of migrants attempting to reach Europe on overcrowded, unseaworthy boats run by people smugglers who are able to operate out of Libya with impunity because of the chaos engulfing the north African state.

The deadliest incident prior to Sunday occurred off Malta in September 2014. An estimated 500 migrants drowned in a shipwreck caused by traffickers deliberately ramming the boat in an attempt to force the people on board onto another, smaller vessel.

In October 2013, more than 360 Africans perished when the tiny boat they were crammed onto caught fire within sight of the coast of Lampedusa.

The latest disaster comes after a week in which two other migrant shipwrecks left an estimated 450 people dead.

More than 11,000 other would-be immigrants have been rescued since the middle of last week and current trends suggest last year's total of 170,000 migrants landing in Italy is likely to be exceeded in 2015.

POSITIONS: 

The European Commission said it is “deeply chagrined” by the tragic developments in the Mediterranean today, but also over the past days and weeks.

“The reality is stark and our actions must therefore be bold. These are human lives at stake, and the European Union as a whole has a moral and humanitarian obligation to act.

The Commission said it was currently consulting with member states, European agencies and international organisations in order to prepare a new European Migration Strategy, to be adopted by the Commission in mid-May.

The Socialists and Democrats (S&D) group in the European Parliament called for an extraordinary EU summit to restore the Mare Nostrum operation.

The European Parliament President Martin Schulz said the latest tragedy off the Lybian coast has left him “speechless” and called for the EU to help put in place a government of national unity in Libya.

“Words of grief are not enough. We cannot continue like this. Every day we sit idly by and watch how people put themselves into the hands of criminal and inhumane traffickers and die on their way to Europe, we burden ourselves with more blame.

Europe can do more and Europe must do more. It is a shame and a confession of failure how many countries run away from responsibility and how little money we provide for rescue missions. The cooperation with the authorities in our Mediterranean neighbourhood and the creation of a government of national unity in Libya are of crucial importance.

It is more than time to finally change our refugee and migration policies. Without a genuine common European approach based on solidarity, which offers people the opportunity to come to Europe legally and which places hope instead of despair, the next tragedy is only a matter of time."

The President of the Socialists and Democrats group Gianni Pittellastated:

"The deafening silence of so many Member States is an embarrassment for Europe, and is no longer acceptable. Following the latest news coming from Lampedusa, where hundreds of people are feared dead after their boat capsized off the Sicilian coast, European governments must put their selfishness aside. The hypocrisy must stop: the responsibility for this tragedy does not lie with ‘the European Union’ but with individual European governments. Some more than others.

"Therefore, we call for an immediate extraordinary European Council summit to establish once and for all a European ‘Mare Nostrum’ operation. There is no alternative. Moreover, a joint action, implemented by all European Home Affairs and Foreign ministers, is needed to put and end to this bloodbath, firstly by breaking down the criminal networks of traffickers and smugglers, and secondly by supporting a credible resettlement program and strengthening cooperation with third countries along the main migratory routes. Triton is tragically incapable of avoiding new tragedies in the Mediterranean.”

John Dalhuisen, Amnesty International’s Director for Europe and Central Asia called Sunday's accident a "man-made tragedy of appalling proportions."

“Whilst merchant vessels and their crews have bravely attempted to fill the gap left by the chronic shortfall in specialist search and rescue teams, they are not designed, equipped or trained for maritime rescue. It is time for European governments to face their responsibilities and urgently set up a multi-country concerted humanitarian operation to save lives at sea,” Dalhuisen said.

Amnesty is among NGOs calling for the restoration of an Italian navy search-and-rescue operation known as Mare Nostrum which was suspended at the end of last year.

In view of the latest tragedy in the Mediterranean, European Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship, Dimitris Avramopoulos and Spain's Minister of the Interior Jorge Fernández Díaz, have decided to postpone their visit to Ceuta and Melilla in Spain.

Commissioner Avramopoulos stated: "The latest tragedy in the Mediterranean is a stark reminder that we need to take bold actions to deal with the growing migration crisis. Tomorrow, I will travel to Luxembourg to participate in the Foreign Affairs Council which will discuss migration in light of the recent events. My visit to Ceuta and Melilla remains one of my priorities and I expect that a new date will be set soon."

Minister of the Interior Jorge Fernández Díaz stated: "I would like to express my deep sorrow for today's tragedy in the Mediterranean. There is an urgent need take action and to respond effectively to this humanitarian crisis."

The Party of the European Left requested immediate legal access in Europe to the people fleeing of wars and devastating living conditions.

“The lack of legal and secure ways in reaching and entering Europe facilitates human trafficking, an action that not only traumatises the mere notion of human identity and civilisation, but has also become a most profitable business worldwide and a major threat for the survival of its victims. We demand the immediate abolition of all unfair Dublin regulations. […]We reject the possibility of xenophobia and racism becoming the pillars of European societies and we fully embrace the universal appeal of international solidarity, justice, equity and respect of human rights”, the Party of the European Left stated.

Tusk: The situation in the Mediterranean cannot continue via EurActiv

Guardian: Thirty years in jail for a single hair: the FBI's 'mass disaster' of false conviction

"The results, first reported by the Washington Post, concluded that an astonishing 26 of the 28 FBI agents who had provided testimony as expert witnesses at trial based on microscopic hair analysis had made statements to juries that were known to be false."


Source: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/21/fbi-jail-hair-mass-disaster-false-conviction

FBI

Thirty years in jail for a single hair: the FBI's 'mass disaster' of false conviction

A ‘dirty bomb’ of pseudo-science wrapped up nearly 268 cases – perhaps hundreds more. Now begins the ‘herculean effort to right the wrongs’

 In 2013, the FBI admitted that the foundations of what it called ‘hair comparison evidence’ were scientifically invalid. Photograph: Sarah Lee

George Perrot has spent almost 30 years in prison thanks to a single hair. It was discovered by an FBI agent on the bedsheet of a 78-year-old woman who had been raped by a burglar in her home in Springfield,Massachusetts, in 1985.

Perrot, then 17, was put on trial, despite the absence of physical evidence tying him to the crime scene. There was no semen. There was no blood. And so there was no way to conduct a conclusive DNA test.

Even the victim testified that the defendant looked nothing like her attacker: he had a short haircut and was clean-shaven, while Perrot had a long shaggy mop, a moustache and a goatee beard.

But there was that strand of hair. At a key stage in the 1992 rape and burglary trial, an FBI agent named Wayne Oakes took the witness stand, describing himself to the jury as an expert in hair and textile fibers – as would so many of the agency’s trial witnesses, in condemning hundreds of people to long prison sentences.

Individual head or pubic hairs were distinctive, he told the court, to the extent that a well-trained specialist like himself could tell those belonging to one person from another. Oakes went on to bombard the jury with scientific jargon, referring to the medulla, the cortex and the cuticle of hair, likening the task of comparing individual strands to recognizing a specific person in a crowd.

“In 10 years, it’s extremely rare I will have known hair samples from two different people I can’t tell apart,” the self-proclaimed expert bragged.

The FBI agent’s conclusion in front of the jury was emphatic: “The hair found on the sheet exhibits all the same microscopic hair arranged in the same way as the characteristics present in the known hair from [Perrot]. I conclude that the hair was consistent with coming from the defendant,” he told the court.

That testimony, based on a single hair, was so strong, so wrapped in the certainties of science, that it wiped out all doubts and inconsistencies in the prosecution’s case – indeed, it eviscerated the presumption of innocence.

There was only one problem: the “expert” analysis, delivered by Wayne Oakes under oath and effective enough to obliterate one-third of a man’s life and counting, was wrong.

 George Perrot as a youngster. Photograph: Supplied

‘Potentially tens of thousands’ of cases gone wrong

In July 2013, the FBI admitted that the foundations of what it called “hair comparison evidence” – a technique that its agents had used in hundreds of criminal cases nationwide and spread through the training of state-based detectives potentially through tens of thousands of other cases – were scientifically invalid. A preliminary review of the FBI’s follicular flaws found that:

• Microscopic hair analysis could not scientifically distinguish one individual to the exclusion of all others.
• Statistical weight could not be given to comparisons to suggest a likelihood that the hair derived from a specific source.
• Expert witnesses should not cite the number of hair analyses they had conducted in the lab to bolster the idea that they could definitively state that a hair belonged to a specific individual.

All three errors were made by Agent Oakes in front of Perrot’s jury.

Over the past few years, advanced understanding in the science of hair types has left hair analysis, as a forensic tool, in tatters. Today’s consensus by real experts is more straightforward than ever: there is nothing that can credibly be said, by FBI-approved analysts or anyone else, about about the frequency with which particular characteristics of hair are distributed in the human population.

In other words, microscopic analysis of hair – the very analysis that put George Perrot and so many people behind bars – is virtually worthless as a method of identifying someone. It can only safely be used to rule out a suspect as the source of crime-scene materials or in combination with the vastly more accurate technique of DNA testing.

As the scientific basis of hair analysis has crumbled, the scale of the judicial catastrophe caused by the FBI’s enthusiastic use of it for decades until about 2000 has now begun to emerge more fully. On Monday, the FBI and the US Justice Department, together with the Innocence Project and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, released the findings of the first stage of a joint investigation into these historic civil rights mistakes.

The results, first reported by the Washington Post, concluded that an astonishing 26 of the 28 FBI agents who had provided testimony as expert witnesses at trial based on microscopic hair analysis had made statements to juries that were known to be false. Their erroneous evidence was found in a full 90% of the trial transcripts the team has studied.

The government has identified almost 3,000 cases in which FBI agents may have given testimony involving the now-discredited technique. So far only about 500 of those cases have been been reviewed.

Some 268 of those involved FBI examiners providing expert evidence in court that pointed to the guilt of the defendant – of which 257, or 96%, included false testimony.

Most shockingly, at least 35 defendants received the death penalty, 33 of which were the subject of false FBI testimony. Nine of the prisoners were executed and five died from other causes on death row.

Chris Fabricant, the Innocence Project’s director of strategic litigation who is representing Perrot in his ongoing struggle for freedom, called the FBI’s use of hair analysis a “mass disaster” for the criminal justice system.

“We have potentially tens of thousands of convictions tainted by false evidence,” he told the Guardian. “It’s going to take a herculean effort to right the wrongs in these cases, and so far we have made only a tiny start.”

In a paper published this month and written with William Tucker Carrington of the University of Mississippi law school, Fabricant traces the first reported use of hair analysis to 1855, when John Browning and his son, Gaston, were tried for murdering a plantation overseer. Hairs were found on a rope in the defendants’ home which were compared to the Brownings’ hair and found to be identical.

The pseudo-science deployed in 1855 changed little in over a century. What did change was that after the second world war, the FBI embraced the technique, giving it a professional veneer – a government stamp of approval.

“They began presenting false evidence to juries based on scientific language that was very impressive to juries. It was like a dirty bomb that went off in the criminal justice system – hair analysis was said to be objective, unbiased and definitive, so it was both very prejudicial against defendants and very powerful,” Fabricant said.

Admitting fault as a nation, as cold cases persist

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 A review found that microscopic analysis of hair is virtually worthless as a method of identifying someone. Photograph: Steven Puetzer/Getty Images

Despite the FBI’s unqualified admission of error, George Perrot remains in prison, with no immediate resolution to his case in sight. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts continues to oppose a retrial, with a hearing scheduled for late this summer.

Fabricant said he is particularly anxious about the future for potentially thousands of people convicted for serious crimes such as murder and rape on the basis of false evidence given by detectives at state level, nearly all of whom were trained by the FBI in microscopic hair analysis. The federal agency has admitted its mistakes and is now working hard to address the miscarriages of justice on a national level, but state authorities are proving much more sluggish in their responses.

Typical is the case of Timothy Bridges, who is 23 years into his sentence in North Carolina. He was convicted of the 1989 sexual assault and beating of an elderly woman in Charlotte.

The criminal investigation uncovered no physical evidence of any sort to link Bridges to the scene – like Perrot, no semen or fingerprints were found, nor blood or DNA of any sort. But there were two hairs collected at the victim’s home and analyzed by an examiner for the state of North Carolina, who had been trained by the FBI in precisely the same now-discredited techniques.

The two hairs, the examiner told the jury at trial, had “likely originated” with the defendant. Bridges was sentenced to life in prison.

This month lawyers acting for Bridges, with the backing of the Innocence Project, petitioned the county court of Mecklenburg calling for a retrial. The state attorney general is opposing such a measure, but has initiated a search for the hairs in hopes that DNA testing could be carried out that would provide reliable clues. Previously, the state had indicated that the hairs had been destroyed, in violation of North Carolina law.

Fabricant, who is also acting on the Bridges case, said that states where examiners had been trained by the FBI in hair analysis had to act.

“Tens of thousands of people may have been caught in this trap,” he said. “When even the FBI has admitted liability, then states who were trained to use this discredited technique are now legally and morally obligated to step up to the plate.”

Mark Saunders Named Toronto Police's New Chief : Five (5) articles

5 things to know about new Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders

Mark Saunders has been named the next chief of the Toronto Police Service, the first black chief in the department’s history. Here's what you need to know about...

GLOBALNEWS.CA|BY JAMES ARMSTRONG

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Saunders pledges more community input on carding | Toronto Star

Mark Saunders will officially become the first black leader of the Toronto Police later this week, after current Chief Bill Blair retires. Saunders says he's happy if his...

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  Toronto police board passes revised carding policy | Toronto Star

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Sources familiar with the search said Saunders “blew away” the board members in his interviews.

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Mark Saunders named Toronto police's new chief: sources

The Toronto Police Service has picked Mark Saunders as its new chief, sources tell CBC News.

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openDemocracy: Hidden women human rights defenders in the UK

Source: https://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/jennifer-allsopp/hidden-women-human-rights-defenders-in-uk#.VTQUUMBxQDE.twitter

Hidden women human rights defenders in the UK

JENNIFER ALLSOPP 18 April 2015

Without recognising the work of women who seek to protect human rights domestically, the UK government risks seeing the activist’s role as a stage of international development rather than as a core function of democracy. 

Focus E15 march, London 2014. Photo: Philip RobinsTwenty years after presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s globally resonantspeech which declared that ‘women’s rights are human rights’, the term Woman Human Rights Defender (WHRD) has become a zeitgeist of the international development and protection framework. It’s a welcome response to the acute violence faced by women activists around the world. The term refers to – and is commonly adopted by – both those who fight to secure women’s human rights, and women working to secure the human rights of all. As Betty Makoni, Zimbabwean activist and founder of Girl Child Network, once told me, as WHRDs ‘we hold the front-line.'

WHRD is a label that’s truly international in nature. It encompasses women inBurma and the DRC seeking justice in the face of state violence; activists in the biggest arms producing nations campaigning against killer robots; and those sheltering their communities from the devastating effects of environmental degradation. The term also carries a normative punch, the subject of a number of regional and international instruments and missions including the 1998 UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders; 2013 UN General Assembly Resolution on the Protection of WRHD; 2004 EU Guidelines on Human Rights Defenders; and work of the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights.

This political resonance, coupled with growing recognition of the commonality of the objectives and challenges experienced by women activists across diverse contexts, provides the backdrop to this year’s Nobel Women’s Initiativeconference on the defence of women human rights defenders. The Nobel Women’s Initiative is headed by eight female Nobel Peace Prize laureates. Between April 24 and April 26 they will join over 100 women from around the world in the Netherlands to take stock of the progress made to date, explore ways of building global support and scope out the potential for future change. At openDemocracy 50.50 we are publishing articles by participants framing this year's theme, and we will be reporting live from the gathering.

As I prepared for the conference I was curious to see whether the message of solidarity towards WHRDs had reached grassroots activists in my home country, the UK. For while the term is readily employed to serve the government’s development agenda abroad, with ring-fenced funds in the international development budget and consistent attention from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the UK is often accused of operating a politics of denialor ‘double standards’ when it comes to domestic women’s human rights.

I spoke to three women activists who are part of the UK’s increasingly animatedcivil society landscape about their experiences.

Human rights in the UK: ‘the dustbin of history’?

27 year old Danielle is an environmental activist. Does she identify as a WHRD? ‘I’ve not heard the term before’, she comments, ‘but it makes sense. I see human rights and climate change as being inextricably linked. It’s primarily a huge social justice issue linked to people’s right to survive and our ability to maintain basic human rights. The more we talk about this existential challenge in terms of human rights rather than the environment the stronger it is’. Danielle cites Naomi Klein’s analysis on capitalism versus climate as fundamental to her understanding of the environment, human rights and social justice. She believes that the systemic changes needed to tackle the climate crisis provide ‘a real opportunity to re-establish structures in a more socially equitable way’.

Sarah, a 27 year old London based anti-austerity activist with campaign groupsSisters Uncut and Focus E15 has also never heard the term WHRD. Does it resonate? ‘On some level it does’, she reflects. ‘Human rights is not something I refer to, but a lot of what I do is to defend something along the lines of human rights and social justice. It’s about addressing the lack of social justice for women, people of colour and working class people at the brunt of marginalisation.’ We discuss how austerity in the UK has eroded human rights in concrete terms, devastating the lives of single mothers, survivors of sexual violence and disabled individuals by closing key support services which provided access to food and housing. In the space of a year almost 1 million adults and children have been forced to rely on food banks.

Much of Sarah’s current work centres on the housing crisis. ‘We have a situation of forced displacement’, she explains, ‘working class and ethnic minority people are being pushed out of their communities based on financial speculation.’ I ask whether human rights come into it. ‘Yes’, she reflects, ‘despite problems in the media and the way human rights are presented inEurope there’s a consensus that people should have access to a general level of being.’ But her concern is that human rights alone are not enough: ‘signing up to more legislation is not going to solve a lot of the problems for me. Human rights can help but not take it away. Women’s suffering will stay until certain people stop having massive interests in maintaining inequality and the capitalist system’.

Latefa, an Algerian born activist, is the only one of the three women I interview who has previously heard the term WHRD. It resonates with her work promoting women’s human rights in the UK asylum context. ‘For me’, says Latefa, ‘being a WHRD is a useful identity, it means to fight or give voice to other women who have no opportunity to talk or fight because they’re still under oppression’. The oppression, she explains, can be familial, societal or because of one’s insecure immigration status.

Before she came to the UK, Latefa was a woman’s human rights advocate in Algeria, working with trade unions against sexual harassment and for the promotion of labour rights. ‘I was shocked when I came to the UK and faced racism’, she explains. ‘I remain shocked by what I see here – when I see pregnant asylum seeking women detained or deported. What I see in the UK is relativist human rights, human rights are for some people but not for everyone’. The UK government has been criticised in recent years for slashing legal aid tovulnerable migrants and domestic violence survivors and remains the only country in Europe without a time limit on detaining migrants – including the pregnant, the elderly and the disabled.

Solidarity protest for women refugees

In her experience it’s hard, says Latefa, for some British citizens to empathise with the human rights abuses happening on their doorstep. She tells the story of a Pakistani lady deported with her child after many years living in Wales: ‘a white middle class woman who knew her asked me, “but you’re not asking for all women who have suffered domestic violence to come here?” Her message was, “domestic violence is a norm in Pakistan so she can live with that; but she can’t live with that in the UK – under my nose.” She wanted to believe herself that she was in the country of human rights. But there are issues that transcend borders.’

At risk defending human rights

Much international work which seeks to protect WHRDs focuses on documenting the challenges, risks and harms which come with confronting such issues. My next question to the activists is, what challenges do they face in the UK?

For Sarah, the main risks in London stem from the police. ‘My experience has been the opposite to what you’re brought up to believe’, she tells me, ‘as a kid you’re told if you’re lost go and talk to a police woman, when you’re an activist it becomes the opposite. There’s a lot of concern about police infiltration and intelligence gathering, raising issues of safety and also welfare’. The second risk comes from physical confrontation with the police. ‘A few years ago I witnessed horrendous stuff happening in the context of the education riots, massive heavy handedness.’ As a woman of colour, Sarah is also concerned about institutional racism.

Danielle has also faced intimidating encounters with the police, including being arrested and prosecuted for actions which involved shutting down core parts of infrastructure. ‘Coal and gas power stations are high stress and high risk’, she explains. ‘It’s quite an intense and terrifying process to go through so the ability to support others is really important’. The best kind of groups she’s been involved with, she tells me, are the groups that respect each other and put effort into building and maintaining relationships. ‘The environmental direct action movement has previously been characterised as very white and very male’, she continues, ‘there’s a certain culture around it. Being a woman in that space is important to distil and dilute that, to bring in a less macho component. The actions I’ve done in all women groups have had a distinctly different tone; we’ve been able to deal with difficult situations with less bravado and more honestly. I’m motivated by the fact more women need to be out there doing bold things.’

For Latefa, like Danielle, often challenges can lie in the makeup of the group: ‘sometime there’s division, she laments, ‘the challenge is to put gender above your dress, your religion, your culture, even your nationality, but it’s hard. They look at you as a refugee, or the brown one, or the Muslim one. This, in the UK, is something I challenge.’

Looking outwards

If a significant contrast exists between the UK government’s discourse on human rights abroad and at home, I wonder how the activists relate to the efforts of the Nobel Women’s Initiative to unite women activists around a common agenda to strengthen women’s participation and access to their human rights.

Sarah agrees that this is important: women, regardless of their backgrounds, need to be at the forefront of the rights conversation at all levels: local, national, and international.  ‘There are so few positive women led spaces in the world that have any kind of impact politically’, she continues, ‘so if this is the beginning of that then it’s amazingly positive. The next question is, what’s the action?’

Danielle sympathises. In recent years she’s felt the power of international solidarity. ‘What I do is in solidarity with the rest of people in the world who will feel the effects of climate change’, she explains, ‘but I feel a responsibility stemming from the birthplace of the industrial revolution to do the bulk of the action here’. She recounts how on Global Divestment Day they worked alongside Bangladeshi and Colombian communities directly influenced by fossil fuel extraction funded by British companies and investors. ‘It was brilliant’, she reminisces. ‘We also had a solidarity letter coming from Uganda saying keep up the fight and that was so much more powerful than we realised. We just suddenly received this email from a group of activists saying “Divest London we stand with you” and I just cried.’

Divest London. Photo: Peter Marshall

In conversation with Danielle, Latefa and Sarah I became aware of the big risk which the UK government runs of exoticising WHRD, as seeing their work as a stage of international development rather than a core function of society and democracy. Without committing to human rights – and recognising rather than stalling the work of those who seek to protect them at home – the UK risks spreading a dichotomous and hypocritical narrative of international development and domestic denial.

The challenges faced by women activists in the UK are clearly different from many WHRDs around the world, but there are also important overlaps. And as human rights become increasingly stigmatised in Britain – with headlines from popular tabloids such as ‘End of Human Rights Farce’ and ‘We’ll Put the Rights Act in the Dustbin of History’ – we must be careful that, in our pragmatism, we don’t become isolated and stop communicating with our international allies. Transnational solidarity is fundamental because patriarchy affects us all and can only be reformed with a global movement. This is not a new message, but one that comes to us from one of Britain’s most celebrated female activists, Sylvia Pankhurst. Although remembered for her role in the domestic women’s suffrage movement, Pankhurst was also a friend of Ethiopia and spoke out loudly and often in solidarity with its national independence movement. Though now a national heroine, in her writings, she once noted, ‘I would like to be remembered as a citizen of the world’.

Read articles by participants and speakers framing and addressing this year's Nobel Women's Initiative conference theme: 'Defending the Defenders'.   Jennifer Allsopp will be reporting live from the conference for 50.50. Read previous years' coverage.