Front Line Defenders founder Mary Lawlor stood in the foyer of a south Dublin hotel on the evening of 8 October, watching a stream of human rights defenders from around the world push through the revolving doors and up to the reception desk.
Among the lawyers from central Africa and LGBT rights activists from eastern Europe, Lawlor spotted one of the people she’d been looking for: Guatemalan rights defender Yolanda Oquelí.
It was an emotional reunion. The last time Lawlor had seen Oquelí was in a safe house in Guatemala, where Oquelí had been hiding with her children. “It was just two weeks after she had survived an assassination attempt when, as she was going to put petrol in her car, two men on a motorbike pulled up and shot her,” said Lawlor.
Oquelí had been targeted because of her protests against a local mining project, and Mary Lawlor’s Dublin-based organisation, which provides practical support to hundreds of at-risk rights defenders worldwide, had given Oquelí emergency grants for safe houses and medical care.
“The situation in Guatemala is very volatile and increasingly dangerous for rights defenders,” said Lawlor. “Yolanda is exactly the kind of person we try to help – somebody seriously at risk because of peaceful protests.”
Largest human rights gathering
Oquelí is one of over 140 activists from more than 90 countries who flew to Ireland for Front Line Defenders’ seventh Dublin Platform at Dublin Castle from 9-11 October. It’s one of the largest gatherings of human rights defenders in the world, and an opportunity for leading rights workers to meet their counterparts and share their knowledge.
Lawlor, a Dublin native with decades of experience working for the Irish branch of Amnesty International, set up Front Line Defenders in 2001 and organised the first Dublin Platform a year later. The idea came to her after a Paris human rights summit in 1998, she said.
“I was so moved by all the stories I heard from brave men and women fighting for the rights of their local communities, and I asked myself: who was looking after them?”
The Dublin Platform, held every two years, continues to be an important part of its work, she said. “Human rights defenders can often feel very isolated. But when they come here, to the Dublin Platform, and meet other rights defenders from around the world and share their stories, they hopefully realise that they are not alone.”
For some rights defenders, like Raed Fares – who runs an anti-government media centre in the Syrian town of Kafranbel – it’s an opportunity to learn from others’ tactics.
For rights defender Roshanak Wardak, a doctor and former member of Afghanistan’s parliament, the Dublin Platform was a welcome break from her war-shattered country.
From evil comes determination
For Lawlor, making sure Front Line Defenders is flexible enough to recognise all the variations of violence and intimidation local rights defenders face is a major challenge.
“I think we need to be more locally led to meet the needs of defenders,” she said. “We’re trying to work out how to better assist women human rights defenders from places like the Democratic Republic of Congo and from places like Afghanistan.”
Right now, though, she’s still processing all that she heard at this year’s Dublin Platform.
“The stories were so unbearably sad,” she said. “But then out of all this suffering and evil comes this goodness, this resilience and this determination.”
Lois Kapila is a freelance journalist who recently completed a media internship with Front Line Defenders.
