Front Line Defenders, as part of an informal coalition of Civil Society Organisations, presents the Mapping paper and the Pathways paper for a Protection Mechanism for Human Rights Defenders and Civil Society Organisations in Europe.
While the European Union has guidelines to support human rights defenders from outside the EU and nearly a decade ago set up Protect Defenders, which Front Line Defenders chairs, to rapidly support human rights defenders at risk, nothing similar exists within the EU. Defenders find themselves illusively searching for support at a moment when they are also under severe stress.
The papers aim to map the existing protection landscape and, based on the gaps and challenges, propose ways to build a stronger ecosystem for the protection of human rights defenders (HRDs) and civil society organisations (CSOs).
