Protesting is protected by the right to peaceful assembly and is protected by Section 10 of the Constitution, which stipulates that:
“All citizens shall have the right to assemble peacefully and without arms.”
For an assembly to be lawful in Malaysia, organisers must give the police notice 10 days before the assembly date. The police are required to respond within 5 days. Under section 16(1) of the Peaceful Assembly Act (2012), the organisers may appeal within 48 hours if they do not agree with the restrictions and conditions imposed by police.
However, note that:
You can also express your objections to a decision of your employer by organising a strike. A strike is the denial of work organised by a body of employees as a form of protest, typically to gain a concession or concessions from their employer.
The right to strike is legally based on the right to form a union or association by virtue of Section 10 (1) (c) of the Malaysian Constitution. It is also recognized through various Sections of the Industrial Disputes Act (1947) and the Trade Union Act (1959).
Freedom of peaceful assembly can only be restricted by law in the interests of the security and public order of the State.
The authorities can sometimes unduly restrict the right to peaceful assembly by arresting and prosecuting human rights defenders. State and local authorities can also impede registration of unions, repress independent union activity, and use their power to declare strikes illegal and force the matter to be heard in court.
The arrest of protestors can be based on the following offences:
Any member of an unlawful assembly is criminally liable under the Penal Code.
Warning: Before taking any of the steps listed below, you can strategically assess the risks involved with taking certain actions and make sure that you prioritise your physical and psychological safety and security.
For an assembly to be lawful in Malaysia, organisers must give the police notice 10 days before the assembly date. The police are required to respond within 5 days. Under section 16(1) of the Peaceful Assembly Act (2012), the organisers may appeal within 48 hours if they do not agree with the restrictions and conditions imposed by the police.
However, note that:
According to sections 83 and 84 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, Magistrate, gazetted police officer, police officer not below the rank of Inspector or officer in charge of a police station, can disperse an assembly by using force if such assembly is likely to cause a disturbance of the public peace.
For a strike to be lawful, two-thirds of the members of a trade union must vote in favour of a strike.
So, as a first point to remember, a legal strike in Malaysia needs a trade union. The vote should be carried out in a secret ballot, and the ballot must include a resolution that stipulates "the nature of the acts to be carried out or to be avoided during the strike". The results of the ballot should be submitted to the Director General of Trade Unions (Ministry of Human Resources) for verification, within 7 days.
The second point is that you should register your future strike with the Director General of Trade Unions.
If the authorities try to prevent you from exercising your freedom of assembly, you can consider filing a petition for judicial review at the High Court.
Warning: Before taking any of the steps listed below, you can strategically assess the risks involved with taking certain actions and make sure that you prioritise your physical and psychological safety and security.
According to the Peaceful Assembly Act of 2012, to conduct a lawful assembly in Malaysia, organisers must give the police notice of an assembly within 10 days before the assembly date. The police are required to respond within 5 days. Under section 16(1) of the PAA, the organisers may appeal within 48 hours if they do not agree with the restrictions and conditions imposed by police.
However, if the police or any other authority unduly restricts your right to assembly, you can consider filing a petition for judicial review at the High Court. For example, you can file a petition for judicial review of the police decision and ask for a writ of certiorari, that would quash the prohibition of your public assembly.
To file for judicial review, you have to be adversely affected by the decision or at least show that you have a real and genuine interest in the subject matter. It is not necessary to establish infringement of a private right or the suffering of special damage.
With your judicial review application, you can challenge decisions, acts and omissions of Ministers, the Federal Government, State Governments, Royal Malaysian Police, Tribunals, Industrial Courts, local authorities, and others.
By filing for judicial review, you ask the court to examine whether a lower court or other state authority by prohibiting the protest acted without competence, or unconstitutionally, unreasonably, disproportionately, or unfairly. Other reasons might include when the authority did not give you the opportunity to be heard or failed to give reasons for a decision.
Before filing your case, you must exhaust all alternative remedies, e.g., apply to the administrative authorities. Then, you should file your case before the High Court. If your case is rejected, you can appeal to the Court of Appeal and may seek leave to appeal to the Federal Court thereafter.
With your judicial review petition, you can ask the court to:
You should file for judicial review within three months from when the grounds for your application arose, e.g. when a decision was first communicated to you.
Note that in your writ petition, you can also ask for compensation.
Warning: Before taking any of the steps listed below, you can strategically assess the risks involved with taking certain actions and make sure that you prioritise your physical and psychological safety and security.
If an enforcement officer restricts your freedom of assembly, you can approach the Enforcement Agency Integrity Commission. Enforcement officers are mainly police officers, but they can also be officers of the immigration department, the anti-drug agency, the Labour Departments, and the Department of the Environment.
You can file a complaint if an enforcement officer prevented you from protesting in a way that was contrary to the law, or unjustified, unreasonable, unjust, oppressive, or improperly discriminatory.
The Commission will investigate your complaint. If the complaint is of disciplinary nature, it will refer it to the appropriate Disciplinary Authority. If it is of criminal nature, it will refer it to the public prosecutor. If it concerns corruption, it will refer it to the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission.
All complaints must be made in writing, by
If a public officer unduly restricted your freedom of assembly, you could approach the Public Complaints Bureau.
You can file complaints, when the restriction by a state official is unjust, not in accordance with existing laws and regulations, based on abuse of power, and when there is misconduct of public servants, delay or non-delivery of services, lack of public facilities and other inefficiencies. Indicatively, your complaint might refer to:
You can file your complaint by telephone, email, and online form at the following website: http://www.pcb.gov.my.
If you are a woman human rights defender, who has suffered harm through a wrong, unfair, or unlawful action of the government agencies and officials, you can file a complaint to the Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development. The Ministry will investigate your complaint, consult with relevant agencies, and issue appropriate recommendations.
What are the specific types of complaints filed? The types of complaints received by the Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development are about delays, lack of action, unfair actions, lack of public facilities, policy flaws and legal weaknesses, abuse of power/distortion, misconduct of public servants, failure to follow procedures, failure of enforcement and unsatisfactory quality of service.
How? You can submit a complaint by phone, present it in person, write a letter or fax. You also use the following website Government of Malaysia - Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development (spab.gov.my).
If you are victimised due to your work protecting environmental rights, you should consider informing the Director General of Environmental Quality, by filing a complaint.
You can submit your complaint online here DOE e-Complaint System.
If you belong to an indigenous group, you should be aware that the Constitution gives the Malays and natives of any of the States of Sabah and Sarawak, a “special position” in the country. Additional protection is offered by the Aboriginal Peoples Act 1954 and the Sarawak Land Code 1958. In Sabah and Sarawak there are also Native Courts having jurisdiction on matters of native law and custom.
Warning: Before taking any of the steps listed below, you can strategically assess the risks involved with taking certain actions and make sure that you prioritise your physical and psychological safety and security.
If a state official or public entity has prevented you from engaging in peaceful assembly about business-related human rights issues you can file a complaint with the National Human Rights Commission (SUKAHAM). The National Human Rights Commission accepts and investigates complaints of human rights violations, unless there is a related court case pending or the case has been fully determined by the Court.
SUKAHAM, upon receiving your complaint, will communicate with the relevant government agency and/or the parties to the complaint, to enquire about the subject matter of the complaint. When the Commission identifies a pattern of human rights violations, it engages in national inquiries instead of examining the complaints one by one.
It also has the power to make appropriate recommendations, such as proposing new legislation, revisions of existing legislation or new policy measures or suggesting any remedies it deems necessary to the affected party or the complainants.
However, SUHAKAM does not have the authority to enforce those recommendations.
Malaysia has ratified several international human rights treaties. Those treaties provide you with certain rights and the state with certain obligations. For every right that you have, the state has a corresponding obligation to respect and fulfil that right and to protect you against abuse of that right by third parties. This means providing the necessary tools so that you can enjoy that right.
Malaysia has ratified the following international human rights treaties:
In addition, the UN Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights apply to all states. The Guiding Principles implement the UN "Protect, Respect and Remedy" Framework, which rests on three pillars:
Therefore, if your rights have been violated by a state agency or official, then the state will be responsible for this violation. If a corporation has committed an abuse against you, then the state will have responsibility for failing to protect you against that abuse. The state might also incur responsibility, if it did not adequately investigate your case or did not provide you with an avenue to seek a remedy.
Depending on the right that has been violated, you might also have different options to engage the international community and seek redress.
If your rights as a woman, a child or a person with disabilities have been violated, the respective legal framework foresees complaints mechanisms, or Committees where you can seek a remedy.
However, Malaysia has not thus far ratified any Optional Protocols which allow for individual communications to be made under the treaties and therefore there is no process that will result in a concrete remedy for you. However, you should consider approaching the international community and making your case internationally. As will be analysed below, this can be useful in improving the human rights situation in your country.
The Special Procedures of the UN Human Rights Council (‘Special Procedures’) are independent human rights experts (‘Rapporteurs’) and ‘Working Groups’ with mandates to report and advise on thematic human rights issues.
With the support of Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), special procedures can:
In cases of business-related human rights abuses, you can draw the attention of your government and raise public awareness by submitting a complaint to the Special Procedures. You can submit a complaint to the Special Procedures if you have suffered an abuse by the state or by a business. Where a business has caused the harm, the state is also responsible for failing to protect you, investigate the harm, and/or provide remedies.
The UN has established various Special Procedures. In cases of attacks against human rights defenders that work on business and human rights issues, the most relevant are:
These are just a few of the Special Procedures. You can find a comprehensive list here: https://spinternet.ohchr.org/ViewAllCountryMandates.aspx?Type=TM&lang=en
In addition, in June 2022, the world’s first Special Rapporteur on environmental defenders was elected under the UNECE Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (Aarhus Convention). The function of this new Special Rapporteur is to ‘take measures to protect any person experiencing or at imminent threat of penalization, persecution, or harassment for seeking to exercise their rights under the Aarhus Convention'. You can submit a complaint to the Special Rapporteur even if domestic remedies have not been exhausted and any information submitted will be kept confidential. The new Special Rapporteur has various tools for resolving complaints and protecting environmental defenders quickly including:
Information submitted to the mandate-holders may be sent by a person or a group of persons who claim to be the victim(s) of human rights abuses. Non-governmental organizations (‘NGOs’) can also submit information, provided they have direct and reliable knowledge of the alleged abuse.
Your communication should fulfil the following conditions:
The application for all Special Procedures is the same. Upon receiving the information on your case, the UN will notify the relevant mandate holders. Therefore, you do not have to choose the specific mandate holder for your case, but you must present your case so that all appropriate offices are notified.
Any communication addressed to Special Procedures mandate-holders must clearly indicate what the concern is in the subject heading of the message and be addressed to:
Special Procedures Division c/o OHCHR-UNOG
8-14 Avenue de la Paix 1211 Genève 10, Switzerland
Fax: +4122 917 90 06
Email: urgent-action@ohchr.org (for complains and individual cases)
For any other information: spdinfo@ohchr.org
You can find the link here: https://spsubmission.ohchr.org/
It is left to the discretion of the mandate-holder to decide whether to act on a given situation. Usually, the Special Procedure will investigate the case and send a letter to the government regarding the abuse that you reported. The letter will ask for clarifications. Where necessary, the Rapporteurs may request that the concerned authorities take action to prevent or stop the abuse, investigate it, bring to justice those responsible and/or make sure that remedies are available to the victim(s) or their families. In these letters, the Rapporteurs may also inform the state of the applicable human rights provisions. In cases where the state is repeatedly failing to reply, the mandate holder might issue a press release. Upon receiving information on abuses, mandate-holders may carry out visits to countries to investigate the human rights situation on the ground.
Note that the Special Procedures Rapporteurs do not have power or authority to enforce their views or recommendations.
To increase exposure and collaboration with the OHCHR, it is recommended that you build relationships with your local OHCHR office. A Human Rights Adviser (HRA) is part of the UN Country Team (UNCT) in Malaysia.
6 Office of the Resident Coordinator
83, Jalan 4, Taman Tan Yew Lai,
58200 Kuala Lumpur,
Wilayah Persekutuan Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia
Tel. +66-2-304-9100
If possible, it is also recommended to visit the OHCHR in Geneva or network with organisations that work directly with the OHCHR.
It is a confidential procedure that aims to address consistent patterns of gross and reliably attested human rights violations in all UN member states, irrespective of whether they have ratified any particular treaty. It is useful for drawing attention to serious underlying problems and calling on the UN to investigate human rights situations in different countries. However, it is not a procedure that will provide a tangible remedy in a particular case.
The complaint must come from a person or a group of persons alleging a violation of their human rights and fundamental freedoms. In addition, NGOs are permitted to lodge a communication provided they have direct and reliable knowledge of the violations.
Your complaint will be admissible if the following conditions are met:
You should send your complaint to:
Complaint Procedure Unit
Human Rights Council Branch
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
United Nations Office at Geneva
CH-1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland
Or by e-mail to: cp@ohchr.org or to any country or regional office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
After an initial screening is done, your complaint will be transmitted to the State concerned to obtain their views on the allegations of violations contained therein. You will be informed of the proceedings at the key stages and you might be asked to provide further information if necessary.
The Human Rights Council will examine a report of your case in a confidential manner (unless it decides otherwise) and may decide one of the following: to discontinue considering the situation when further consideration or action is not warranted; to keep the situation under review and request the State concerned to provide further information within a reasonable period of time; to keep the situation under review and appoint an independent and highly qualified expert to monitor the situation and report back to the Council; to discontinue reviewing the matter under the confidential complaint procedure in order to take up public consideration of it; to recommend to OHCHR to provide technical cooperation, capacity building assistance or advisory services to the State concerned.
All material provided by individuals as well as the replies by the Governments remain of confidential nature during and after the consideration by the Complaint Procedure.
The International Labour Organization (‘ILO’) is a specialized agency of the United Nations, responsible for developing and overseeing international labour standards. It has adopted 189 Conventions. The most important of them are the eight fundamental Conventions, which cover a broad range of topics concerning work, employment, social security, social policy and related human rights. They are legally binding on the states that have ratified them.
Malaysia has ratified the following fundamental conventions:
You can find the Conventions ratified by Malaysia here.
What protections does the ILO offer?
If any of your rights that are protected by an ILO Convention have been violated by your state, then you should consider approaching the ILO, through the ‘Representations’ procedure.’
The procedure allows employers’ or workers’ organizations to make a representation against any Member State that has failed to respect the convention. You can also resort to that procedure, if a private company is violating your rights, and your state fails to protect you.
Who can file a complaint?
Individual victims are not permitted to file complaints before this Committee. Rather, you should inform a national or international organization of workers (trade union) and they can file the complaint on your behalf. In Malaysia this includes the Malaysian Trades Union Congress (MTUC). More details can be found here.
Conditions:
The representation must:
Note that it is not necessary to exhaust all domestic remedies before applying for representation with the ILO. If a case is pending before a national court, this will be taken into consideration by the ad hoc Committee.
How to submit a representation?
All applications should be addressed to the Director General at the following address:
4 Route des Morillons, CH-1211 Genève 22, Switzerland
Or by email to: normes@ilo.org
The International Labour Organization (ILO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations, responsible for developing and overseeing international labour standards. It has adopted 189 Conventions. Eight of them are considered fundamental and they cover a broad range of subjects concerning work, employment, social security, social policy, and related human rights. They are legally binding on the states that ratify them.
Malaysia has ratified the following fundamental conventions
The ILO has established a Committee on Freedom of Association, tasked to promote that right. The Committee can be a useful mechanism for victims who want help in remedying an ongoing situation. Trade unions and civil society organisations should use the Committee’s conclusions which are favourable to workers as tools to pressure governments. Therefore, if your freedom to associate and your right to form trade unions has been violated by the state, a private company, or an individual employer, you can consider filing a complaint to that Committee.
As an individual you are not permitted to directly file a complaint. You should first inform an organisation of workers (trade union) and they can file the complaint on your behalf. The trade union can submit a complaint even if it is not officially recognized by the state. An international organisation of workers can also submit a complaint on your behalf.
Note that the Committee will consider anonymous complaints from persons who fear reprisals only where the Director-General, after examining the complaint, determines that the complaint “contains allegations of some degree of gravity which have not previously been examined by the Committee”. The Committee can then decide what action, if any, to take regarding the complaint.
Necessary Conditions:
If the committee thinks that there is a violation, it might indicate the problems that have been identified and invite the state to take measures. It might also seek agreement of the government concerned for the complaint to be referred to the Fact-Finding and Conciliation Commission.
All applications should be addressed to the Director General at the following address:
4 route des Morillons, CH-1211 Genève 22, Switzerland
Or by email to: normes@ilo.org
Achieving justice and remedy for the abuses that you suffered as a human rights defender working on business-related human rights abuses can be a lengthy and difficult process. It may require a combination of patience and strategy, and you may have to call on different resources to achieve your goal. A comprehensive approach may include using legal remedies together with other kinds of complementary strategies such as strategic campaigning, shareholder accountability strategies, grassroots mobilisation, coalition building or gaining media attention.
It can be overwhelming to think about these considerations right after an abuse has taken place. Before thinking about the strategies, you want to use, try to make sure you are both physically and mentally safe and strong.
Remember that you are not alone in this situation and that there are a range of organisations that can help you and provide you with immediate support in case of an emergency or financial, legal and psychological difficulties. See Resource Hub.
The first thing you may want to consider is building a strategic campaign. A strategic campaign aims to exert pressure on the different strategic relationships of a business or state actor. To develop a strategic campaign, you should carefully analyse your situation and decide which actions will have the most positive impact for your case.
For example, you will have to decide whether you want to deal with your case publicly or privately, loudly or quietly, in a manner that takes into account the political and other sensitivities that exist in your country. The purpose of the strategic campaign is for you to get a clear picture of the situation, the direction you want to take your case and the concrete actions you can attempt to take to achieve this result.
This whole process will be demanding on your resources and your mental and physical health so do not hesitate to reach out and ask for help from organisations that are used to dealing with similar cases! There is no shame in doing so and they can provide you with valuable expertise. See Resource Hub.
To build a strategic campaign you and your collaborators can follow these five steps:
1- Identify your objectives and overall goal: You can do this by asking yourself questions such as What do I want to happen? What do I hope to achieve?
Your overall goal will be the long term and general outcome that you want to achieve. To reach this goal you will need to identify smaller steps and specific milestones that need to take place, these will be your objectives.
! When deciding on your objectives, make sure that they are SMART:
2- Take the time to do a policy analysis and identify your audience: You can identify the policies and regulations that need to change, the key actions and stakeholders who can influence decisions and understand the overall political context that will influence your overall goal. You will further need to identify the stakeholders that can help you achieve your objectives. For example, who are the decision makers involved in the issue? What are the power dynamics at play? You should understand why and how each audience you approach can play a role in reaching your goal or can hinder it. Do not forget, when considering actors that could hinder your goal, to be as specific as possible and write down all details you can find on them including their names and functions.
! Note that if some corporate actors can hinder your goal, other business representatives might help you achieve it! Businesses do not all have the same policies and attitudes when it comes to the respect of human rights and the environment. By interacting with business representatives and industry groups you might find valuable allies that can provide you with support in a variety of ways including testifying on your behalf, paying for bail and fines, or speaking up on your behalf.
3- Identify your strengths, weaknesses and your message: It will be helpful for you to reflect on your internal strengths - skills, knowledge, resources, past experience - and weaknesses - missing networks, capacity for lobbying, contacts in the media or funding. Once you have identified these, you can search for opportunities that exist around you and will enable you to tackle your weaknesses and achieve your objectives. You should further consider the threats that could prevent you from achieving your objectives by asking yourself who are your opponents? Is there a negative political climate around your objective? Identifying them early will enable you to minimise the damage and safety risks they can present.
Once you have reflected on your strengths and weaknesses, you will need to identify what your audience needs to hear and present your message in a persuasive and appealing way. At their core, your messages should be the same, however, depending on the audience you will target, you will need to adapt the way they are framed. Most of the time, advocacy messages have two major components: (1) a calling for what is right and (2) a calling for the audience’s self-interest. You can find different methods to develop advocacy messages by using the key words “advocacy message” and “effective” on Google.
4- Identify your tactics and activities: Depending on your situation and objectives, you will have to use different strategies and tactics to reach your goal. To choose the appropriate tactics for you to use, you can develop a ‘results chain’. The chain will start with your overall goal and outline the small steps you will need to take to get there. In your chain you can describe the assumptions you are making about the impact of the activities you plan on doing. This will help you reflect on your logic and might show you missing activities. It will further help you understand the kind of resources, be it financial or volunteers, that you will need to put your campaign into action. There are various organisations that you can reach out to for financial support. See Resource Hub.
A few examples of activities include one-to-one meetings with high level representatives, the organisation of workshops and conferences, the drafting of a letter to international civil servants, a mass participation event engaging members of the community, social media posts or petitions.
5- Monitor and Evaluate: Finally, you want to make sure that you are keeping track of the efforts you are putting into your campaign to ensure that they are working. You will also want to organise meetings to monitor the campaign and make sure it is going in the direction you want.
Grassroots mobilisation is about bringing together individuals - in your district, region, or community - to influence a specific outcome. It is one of the key elements in successful campaign strategies. Grassroots mobilisation can be highly effective, as we have seen with the #SaveAru movement, because it uses collective action at a local level to influence outcomes at the national level. When every member of the community is participating in ways that they can, and are equally responsible and invested in the cause, the movement is truly powered by collective leadership. The costs of the movement are further distributed between all members of the community and thereby become more affordable.
To build grassroots mobilisation, you and your collaborators can follow five simple steps:
1- Identify the cause you want to address and make a plan of action;
2- Find supporters and volunteers to join your campaign;
3- Reach out and partner with local organisations and community leaders;
4- Implement your plan of action; and
5- Regularly evaluate your progress.
! Do not forget that, when it comes to mobilising members of a community, listening and understanding is more important than influencing and persuading. Having several short conversations will be more efficient than a one-off long speech to a general audience!
To get started, you should identify the cause you want to address
(1). The problem that you want to tackle most probably has a root cause. For example, it can be the lack of respect for human rights and the environment by a company which operates in proximity to your village and has threatened you; the absence of legislation by the government to protect people defending the environment; or the inefficiency of local government officials to implement a law, among other potential root causes. You need to identify the root cause you want to tackle so that you can clearly define the actions and steps you want to take to resolve the issue. Defining the outcome, you are looking to achieve will also be crucial to give your movement a clear direction.
Once you have identified the cause you want to address, you can start creating awareness about your campaign and get interest from individuals in the community
(2). Communication will play a key role here and you can use different approaches such as door-to-door canvassing, face-to-face conversations, emails, phone calls or social media to reach as many community members as possible. Having a campaign website or a Facebook page can be a useful tool to speed up this process and will make you gain important visibility online! It will further constitute a good opportunity to start building the next step by building a list of potential partner organisations.
Using your website and the networks of members from the community you can approach like-minded local organisations and community leaders. See Resource Hub.
(3). To reach out to them you could offer to give a short presentation about your campaign during their events or simply provide your help during their rallies to get to know like-minded people and talk about your campaign. Usually, civil society organisations have dealt with or assisted defenders in similar contexts in the past. They can share their valuable experience with you, guide you on what to do, explain the law and your rights, guide you on where to find support and identify pro bono lawyers that can help you plead your case or provide support in building an advocacy campaign.
! You should not ignore community leaders! Community leaders can be valuable allies that you can collaborate with to convey important messages of your campaign. If a community leader endorses the changes and propositions you raise, they will be more likely to be accepted and followed by the community and your movement will gain traction. Examples of community leaders that can help you are religious leaders, local political office holders or village figureheads.
Once you have built a solid basis of supporters you can start implementing your plan of action
(4). You can take a variety of actions as part of your plan including rallies, outdoor events, in-house groups, training sessions, organising for a group of volunteers to exchange with the local representative or staging a demonstration. No matter the activity that you choose to conduct, the key to success will be having successful communication. You can keep your supporters up to date on actions conducted through SMS, WhatsApp, and encrypted apps such as Telegram and/or post your announcements for events on your campaign website and Facebook page. Do not forget to communicate with your organisers and volunteer team to make sure everyone has the same information including the date, time, and place of the events.
During your campaign, you can organise regular meetings with your supporters to evaluate the success of your actions
(5). This will enable you to reflect on what went well and what did not and give you avenues for improving your upcoming events. At the end of the campaign, it will also enable you to see if you have reached your objectives.
Reaching out to other organisations and talking about your case will give you the opportunity to build coalitions. A coalition is a temporary alliance of individuals, groups or organisations that want to achieve a common goal. Forming a coalition with other organisations that have similar values, interests, and goals as your own will allow you to combine your resources and thereby have more impact than if you acted alone. It can be of great help to shift the balance of power and increase the impact of each of your organisation's efforts. Actions taken by the coalition can be focused towards bringing attention to your and other human rights defender cases in the media, requesting for a motion filed by lawyers to be considered or request the international community to act.
To successfully build a coalition you need to take a series of steps.
Another complementary strategy for your case may be to gain visibility and attention by getting media coverage. Before deciding if you want to use this strategy, you should ask yourself whether you want your case to be publicly known and talked about or if you would rather go about, it quietly. Gaining media coverage can play a pivotal role in presenting your case, promoting it in public debate and positively shaping public opinion in your favour. However, this may expose you to further retaliation, as companies may use strategic lawsuits against public participation [See Section on SLAPPs] to try to silence you. For example, the company could bring a defamation suit against you, the journalist who interviewed you and/or the organisation that published the article. Importantly, you must be careful that the journalist does not reveal your current location so as not to compromise your safety.
To attract media coverage, your story should be prepared in such a way as to catch the attention of readers. You can do this by highlighting why your organisation exists, how important your work is to society and by providing details about the abuse that you have suffered. If you can, try to link your story to an issue that is currently talked about in the public space as this will be more likely to interest the media. Finally, if you can show how your story affects other people and has an impact on wider society, this will increase the interest of newspapers.
Once your story is ready, you can use social media to promote it by publishing blog posts, Instagram stories, Facebook posts and/or tweets. This will enable you to gain public attention and establish your cause before getting traditional media interested in what you have to say.
If you want the attention of mainstream media, you can collaborate with other national and international organisations to contact reporters. You can reach journalists by email, through their social networks (such as LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter) or through partner organisations. You will have a better chance of getting your interview request accepted if you choose journalists who are used to covering the same kind of story as yours.
! Be aware that journalists can receive a lot of requests so keep your emails short and to the point!
If you don't get a response to your first contact request, you can follow up by tweeting the reporter or trying to contact them by phone. Don't get discouraged as getting media attention can be a long process during which you may end up sending your story to twenty journalists before one responds.
When a journalist becomes interested in your story, they will most likely want to talk to you in person. To make sure you are well prepared for the interview, keep in mind three key points you want to make and practice answering questions with a colleague.
Once the interview is over, do not forget to thank the journalist for his or her time. Following the publication of the article, you can forward it to regional or national newspapers thereby gaining exposure and/or circulate it among your partner organisations.
Although business-related human rights abuses find corporate actors at the heart of the human rights abuses, you should not forget that businesses and industry groups do not all have the same policies, attitudes, and views when it comes to the respect for human rights and the environment.
You might want to look for allies in the private sector by reaching out to business representatives and industry groups and explain the issues you are facing. Private actors might become valuable allies who can provide you with support in a variety of ways including by testifying on your behalf, paying for bail and fines, or speaking up on your behalf.
Equally important is to make your case known at international level.
National and international non-governmental organisations are allies in your strategic campaign and have a fundamental role to play in channelling information to relevant institutions abroad. One of their main tasks is to submit the so-called shadow reports to international bodies or during the Universal Periodic Review Process. Those reports analyse how and if the government is realising human rights at the national level and provide the necessary background information to international organisations. In turn, if the shadow reports reveal information on serious and systematic violations of the rights protected by the conventions in the country concerned, international institutions can initiate inquiries or visits to the territory of a State Party. By making your case known to NGOs and INGOs, it can be included in their shadow report. Although this will not give you a tangible remedy, you will have added your brick to the wall of human rights in your country.
You can also bring international attention to your case through the various organisations worldwide that work to protect human rights defenders - including Frontline Defenders, Protect Defenders and Peace Brigades International. You can register your case with one of them, and they will identify the best ways to support you internationally. Be aware that they may publish something on their website or link you with other victims or experts worldwide. If your case is widely known, the offenders might hesitate to retaliate against you in the future. There are also many organisations that work on business and human rights issues that can share legal resources with you, both domestically and internationally. Most importantly, both kinds of organisations can direct you on where to find funding and donors to continue your legal case and to propose other resources necessary for your work as a human rights defender.
You can also contact political figures to draw attention to your case. For example, you can ask a foreign diplomat - by contacting the foreign ministry of the country in question or the embassy - to listen to your story, to come to your trial or simply to have a photo taken with you. This will show your abuser that your case is being taken seriously at the international level and may make them think carefully about retaliatory actions in the future.
If you are uncomfortable with contacting diplomats of foreign countries, you can contact international civil servants instead. International civil servants are not linked to a specific country but rather to an organisation. To contact them, you can look up the offices of OHCHR, UNDP or the ILO in your country. These organisations often organise informal events such as consultations and webinars during which you can have the opportunity to raise your concerns and build a support network.