12-13 July in Vienna (Austria) Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) held a Supplementary Meeting on Protection and Promotion of Human Rights. Liubov Vinogradova (right), Human Rights House Network Advisory Team member, made an introductory speech on the 2d day of the Meeting. She appealed OSCE to take firm measures on protection of post-Soviet area human rights defenders and to raise effectiveness of recommendations, accepted by OSCE. (17-JULY-07)
Written by HRH Moscow / Inna KomarSource: http://www.osce.org
12-13 July in Vienna took place the OSCE Supplementary Human Dimension Meeting. It was entitled “Protection and Promotion of Human Rights: Responsibilities and Effective Remedies”. 273 members from 47 countries from all over the world participated in the Meeting. They were both officials (138) and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) representatives (135).
13 July the Second Session of the Meeting, devoted to the role of civil society and human rights defenders in addressing human rights violations, was opened by Liubov Vinogradova, Russian Research Center for Human Rights (RRCHR) Board member, Human Rights House Network Advisory Team member. In her Introductory speech she stressed on a serious worsening of NGOs` and single human rights activists` situation on the post-Soviet area. Particular attention was paid to their discredit, oppressions and attacks from authorities and Mass-Media, controlled by governments. Some Russian NGO representatives noted that they regard it as a confirmation of grave progress in human rights defenders movements and civil society reinforcement.
Liubov Vinogradova also claimed that “Russian NGOs find the answer to the government attacks in uniting their energies, strong coalitions creation, which are able to resist the apparatus pressure and carry out a broad public campaigns witness for democratic values, rights and freedom of citizens. The striking example of such organization is Human Rights House Network. It’s starting now a project aimed at distant education of lawyers from post-soviet area to international human rights standarts implementation in national judicial practices. The key idea is not only to change the legislation of countries, which haven`t implemented international propositions of law yet, but also, what is more important, to make these propositions work under national legislation. The project carrying out would be a serious step on the way of national human rights mechanisms strengthening.”
In the concluding remarks officials from the Russian Federation reported that the Russian government supports NGOs activities, and nowadays there are enough NGOs in the Russian Federation which constructively cooperate with authorities. At the same time, the government supposes that there is no need to stimulate NGOs activity artificially, all the more some NGOs have a status of human rights defenders only by their names.
