Long Read | Immigration Policy: The Backdoor to Transnational Repression

Article by Siena Anstis, Marcus Michaelsen and Kate Pundyk

August 3, 2026

Long Read | Immigration Policy: The Backdoor to Transnational Repression

Did the United States (US) help Iran track down its own dissidents?

On 7 July, the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund (IALDF) filed a lawsuit alleging exactly that. The Complaint alleges US immigration authorities shared confidential information about Iranian asylum seekers with the Iranian government to facilitate their removal from the United States. If substantiated, the allegations reveal more than an extraordinary instance of cooperation between geopolitical adversaries. They suggest that the US immigration system may have become a vehicle for transnational repression, enabling an authoritarian regime to reach dissidents beyond its borders.

As such, the case exposes a broader paradox: democratic governments present themselves as committed to countering transnational repression, yet their increasingly restrictive migration policies may be helping autocrats achieve precisely what those efforts seek to prevent.

The Complaint

The Complaint filed by IALDF in the US District Court for the District of Columbia alleges that, from March 2025, the Trump administration began sharing “confidential information from the immigration files of Iranians seeking asylum in the United States” directly with the Iranian government.^[1] It further alleges extensive cooperation between US and Iranian officials, including that “the U.S. government allowed the Iranian government to select the Iranians deported to Iran” (paragraph 42).

According to the complaint, this cooperation included sharing asylum file information, coordinating deportation flights, and facilitating in-person meetings between Iranian officials and Iranians detained in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities. IALDF states that many of those affected are “pro-democracy protestors, members of religious minorities such as Evangelical Christians, or members of the LGBTQ community” who sought refuge in the United States because of the dangers they faced in Iran. If disclosed, such sensitive information could enable the Iranian regime to further target these individuals, whether in the United States, following their return to Iran, or indirectly through family members who remain there.

Political Responses to Transnational Repression

Transnational repression arises where perpetrating states seek to intimidate, silence or otherwise target human rights defenders, journalists, political dissidents and other members of civil society beyond their own borders. The US is home to many individuals at risk of such practices, including Iranian asylum seekers. This overlap is no coincidence. Asylum seekers are often fleeing persecution because they have criticised or challenged authorities in their country of origin. As a result, many belong to the very groups most frequently targeted by transnational repression, making immigration systems an important part of efforts to protect them.

Under the Biden administration, the US government emerged as a global leader countering transnational repression through a “whole-of-government” approach that mobilised law enforcement, intelligence, diplomacy and cybersecurity agencies.^[2] It established dedicated reporting mechanisms, pursued criminal prosecutions, imposed sanctions and issued guidance to vulnerable communities.^[3] Ironically, current Secretary of State Marco Rubio previously co-sponsored a bill which would have expanded training for US immigration officials on transnational repression, including on “how foreign governments may try to coopt the immigration system.”^[4]

Other democratic governments have likewise come to recognise transnational repression as a threat to national security and state sovereignty. The Group of Seven (G7), in a public statement in 2025, described transnational repression as an “aggressive form of foreign interference” and adopted a common toolkit to strengthen and coordinate national responses.^[5] The United Kingdom alongside countries such as Canada and Australia have expanded law enforcement capacities and introduced new legislative instruments to better detect, investigate and prosecute acts of transnational repression.^[6] In June, the European Parliament similarly called on the Commission and the Member States to “identify, assess and mitigate structural vulnerabilities in EU and national administrative, legal and financial systems that may be exploited for transnational repression.”^[7]

Restrictive Immigration Policies and Transnational Repression

These initiatives reflect a growing consensus that countering transnational repression requires a coordinated response across government agencies. Yet one crucial area has largely escaped scrutiny: immigration policy. This omission may undermine positive steps taken to counter transnational repression.

Across the US and Europe, governments have embraced more restrictive immigration policies, prioritising deterrence, accelerated removals and closer cooperation with countries of origin. Such policies are driven by domestic concerns about migration and the increasing influence of right-wing and populist tendencies. Yet they also create opportunities for authoritarian governments to exploit immigration systems in host states against asylum seekers. As a result, the same governments that are investing resources in combating transnational repression are simultaneously pursuing immigration policies that can inadvertently facilitate it.

In the US, this dynamic extends beyond the alleged cooperation with Iran and is part of a broader anti-immigration policy shift. For example, US immigration enforcement is “turning its back” on individuals fleeing Russia, including defectors and anti-war critics.^[8] One prominent case is the detention of Kseniia Petrova, a Russian scientist who faced deportation after allegedly filing an improper customs declaration and feared return to Russia after having publicly criticised the invasion of Ukraine.^[9] A similar case arose with the Chinese dissident Guan Heng, who was threatened with deportation despite his role in exposing detention facilities in Xinjiang.^[10] At the same time, similar to the United Kingdom in 2022, the Trump administration has explored an agreement with the government of Rwanda to receive third-country deportations, disregarding Rwanda’s well-documented record as a prolific perpetrator of transnational repression.^[11]

The Cases of Germany and the United Kingdom

In the European Union, Germany illustrates the tension between responses to transnational repression and restrictive immigration policies. The current federal government has explicitly committed to combatting transnational repression.^[12] It has established dedicated task forces across key ministries and amended the German Criminal Code to strengthen penalties for crimes committed on behalf of a foreign government.^[13] However, these measures risk being compromised by the government’s promised “turnaround” in migration policy which comes with tightened border controls and asylum procedures.^[14] In June 2026, for example, authorities deported Tajik opposition activist Asadullo Boboev despite concerns that he faced persecution upon return.^[15] The Government also suspended humanitarian admission programs that previously provided safe pathways for journalists and others at risk from countries such as Russia, Belarus and Iran.^[16]

The United Kingdom presents a similar dynamic. While successive governments have demonstrated greater awareness of foreign states’ threats to national sovereignty and security, recent immigration reforms have prioritised deterrence and prolonged migrants’ legal precarity.^[17] The Conservative government’s proposal to externalise asylum processing to Rwanda, terminated by Labour in 2024, illustrated how migration control can conflict with protecting individuals at risk of political persecution.^[18]

More recently, a parliamentary report warned that politically motivated INTERPOL Red Notices issued by states such as China, Russia and Turkey can create “an automatic presumption of criminality”, affecting asylum and citizenship proceedings.^[19] Similar concerns have arisen in immigration cases involving Hong Kong democracy activists, among them Chloe Cheung, whose application for leave to remain was temporarily withheld because of criminal charges arising from her participation in the 2019 pro-democracy protests.^[20] Such cases show how immigration systems that fail to account for politically motivated prosecutions and other tactics of transnational repression aimed at punishing dissent risk becoming instruments of the very repression they claim to counter.

All these immigration policies were not adopted with transnational repression in mind. But these examples demonstrate how increasingly restrictive immigration policies can weaken protections for those living in exile and create opportunities for authoritarian governments to exert pressure across borders.

Fighting Transnational Repression Through a Whole-of-Government Approach

Authoritarian regimes quickly learn to weaponise the vulnerabilities created by host states’ immigration systems. Since September 2023, for instance, Belarus has denied its citizens abroad the ability to extend or renew their passports in Belarusian consulates.^[21] Unless host state authorities recognise the resulting protection gap and issue alternative identity documents, Belarusians abroad may be forced to return home to obtain valid documents, exposing them to arrest or persecution. The Associated Press documented this dilemma in Germany, where one Belarusian exile explained: “I have a terrible choice to make: become an illegal immigrant in Germany, or return to Belarus, where I will probably be arrested.”^[22] This tactic is not unique. Freedom House has documented at least 12 countries, including Saudi Arabia and China, that strategically withhold consular services from dissidents or targeted groups to force them to return home.^[23]

Against this backdrop, the complaint filed by IALDF is but one illustration of the broader problem: states are fighting transnational repression without addressing the role their own immigration policies play in perpetuating it. Immigration authorities necessarily collect sensitive information about asylum seekers and routinely cooperate with countries of origin over identity verification, travel documents, and removals. However, as the political environment shifts to prioritise “migration control” over refugee protection, the incentives for the removal and deterrence of migrants are increasing. Administrative cooperation with authoritarian countries of origin, once constrained by concerns about persecution, becomes a convenient tool for achieving such objectives. The result is perhaps not necessarily an intention to facilitate transnational repression, but a growing willingness to engage in arrangements that perpetrator states can exploit.

Addressing this paradox requires governments to recognise that immigration policy is a central battleground in the fight against transnational repression. Measures of border externalisation, such as offshore processing, trap people fleeing persecution in third countries under weak rule of law, where authorities may be more willing to cooperate with perpetrator states.^[24] Lengthy and uncertain asylum procedures also discourage victims from reporting threats to law enforcement for fear of jeopardising their immigration status. Therefore, individuals at heightened risk of transnational repression should benefit from additional safeguards, including expedited asylum procedures, robust due diligence before information is shared with countries of origin and strict limits on cooperation that could expose them to repression. Host states should also issue travel documents to individuals unable to obtain them from their countries of origin because of political persecution or blacklisting. Finally, immigration officials need better training to identify and respond to transnational repression.

For the new UK Government, these safeguards should form part of the implementation of its wider immigration reforms.^[25] As the Burnham government with Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood proceeds with changes to the asylum and settlement system, it should ensure that immigration authorities are equipped to identify victims of transnational repression, recognise politically motivated criminal proceedings and avoid administrative cooperation that could expose individuals to persecution by the states they sought to escape.^[26]

More fundamentally, a comprehensive response to transnational repression requires confronting an uncomfortable truth: restrictive immigration and asylum policies leave open a backdoor that governments engaging in transnational repression readily exploit. Host states cannot claim to counter repression across borders while ignoring the role their immigration policies play in enabling it.

Siena Anstis is a PhD fellow in law at the University of Oslo and a senior legal advisor and senior researcher at the Citizen Lab (University of Toronto).

Dr. Marcus Michaelsen is a senior researcher at the Citizen Lab (University of Toronto).

Kate Pundyk is a researcher at the Citizen Lab (University of Toronto) and a JD candidate at McGill University.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this piece are those of the individual authors and do not reflect the views of The Foreign Policy Centre. (more…)

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Human Rights

Tackling Transnational Repression

Beyond the Ballot Box: Democracy Is What Happens Between Elections

Article by Liliana Gutan

July 23, 2026

Beyond the Ballot Box: Democracy Is What Happens Between Elections

Democracy, for me, means accountable institutions anchored in the rule of law. It is not just about elections. Rather, it is everything that happens between elections to ensure people have access to three core values: dignity, safety, and a sense of belonging to a healthy and free society.

Moldova is experiencing the ruptures in the international rules-based order deeply. As Ukraine’s neighbour, we are close to the frontline of its efforts to defend its sovereignty and European security. From the first day of Russia’s full-scale invasion, we have faced threats to our own security, concerted efforts to undermine our democratic institutions, and a huge influx of refugees.^[1]

Moldova is a small country of 2.6 million people, yet in the first months of the war we hosted nearly one million Ukrainian refugees. Our society has not fractured – and Moldovan civil society has been instrumental in sustaining that cohesion, working alongside government and international partners.

The bravery and resilience shown by both Ukrainians and Moldovans is a source of hope. Ukraine continues to resist Russian aggression. And despite unprecedented Russian misinformation and interference in the 2024 EU referendum and our presidential and parliamentary elections, Moldova remains on the path towards EU integration.^[2]

But we should not take our democracy, or public support for it, for granted.

Leaders say that we are living in a complex and chaotic world. Yet acknowledging this complexity is far from enough. We need our leaders to develop a realistic vision rooted in the value of human life – and to calibrate their promises to people’s basic expectations. This requires the courage to listen to what the electorate tells them, especially when they are saying they need to live safe, dignified, and meaningful lives.

I believe the first expectation is to maintain peace and security. This is the core request any population makes of its leaders. The second is sustainable development, which means development rooted in democratic values. These are the foundations upon which citizens choose to place their trust in elected representatives and institutions.

Accountability when It matters most

At the same time, in any healthy democracy, our leaders need to hold themselves accountable to high ethical standards, transparency, and respect for the rule of law. These principles matter most when they are politically inconvenient, and when applying them carries a cost. There can be no exceptions.

Democratic resilience cannot be measured only by how institutions respond to national crises. It must also be measured by how they respond to individual citizens in moments of vulnerability. An investigation into the death of Ludmila Vartic, in March 2026, is one such test – and it goes to the heart of what democratic accountability means in practice.^[3] Ludmila was a mother of two and kindergarten teacher in Hâncești, who committed suicide after years of domestic abuse. Her husband held public office and carried a party card from the governing party. The criminal investigation was opened only after sustained pressure from her family. Dumitru Vartic was eventually charged with domestic violence resulting in death. The case remains ongoing.

Ludmila’s case highlights the wider societal problem of violence against women and girls in Moldova – a problem not unique to Moldova, but faced by societies around the world. It underscores the need for a more effective and consistent response from the state. A society that tolerates violence against women is not a society that offers freedom, safety, and dignity to all its citizens.

Moldova has the necessary legislation in place. It has ratified international conventions on violence against women. The question raised by the Vartic case is therefore not whether legal protections exist, but whether they are applied equally and consistently, regardless of who is implicated.

Accountability cannot be a selective virtue. Too often, in Moldova as elsewhere, politicians invoke democratic principles loudly from opposition and quietly set them aside once in office. The real measure of democratic maturity is not what leaders promise before they reach power – it is what they do when the inconvenient moment arrives: when the accused is an ally, when the investigation touches their own circle, when acting on principle carries a political cost. That is the moment that defines whether a democracy is real or merely performed.

The strongest argument Moldova can make for its European future is not the declarations its leaders make in Brussels. It is what its institutions do for people like Ludmila Vartic.

Moldova is at the most consequential moment in its post-Soviet history – granted EU candidate status in 2022, with accession negotiations opened in 2024. Some argue this is not the moment to risk destabilisation. I reject that framing: a democracy built on selective accountability is not one that Europe should admit, nor one that will endure.

The Vartic case is a reminder that democracy’s credibility is always being tested – not in grand moments of constitutional design, but in the ordinary and often painful questions of whether institutions show up for people when it matters. Moldova has demonstrated, through its response to the refugee crisis, that a society can hold together under extraordinary pressure when the conditions of dignity, belonging, and security are actively maintained. But these conditions are not self-sustaining. They require leadership that is honest enough to acknowledge when they are being undermined – and institutions willing to take action in response.

What democracy requires

Moldova’s experience is not unique. Across this series, contributors have approached these questions from different angles but arrived at a comparable place: that trust erodes slowly before it breaks visibly; that what autocrats destroy first is not infrastructure but dignity, memory, and the capacity for agency; that disengagement is rarely apathy – it is fear. The formal architecture of democracy rests on foundations that are human before they are political. When people lack security, dignity, and belonging, no institutional design recovers them. When they have them, extraordinary things become possible.

The work ahead is not to restore a model that has run its course. It is to understand, honestly, what people actually need to live free and meaningful lives – and to build the political, cultural, and civic conditions in which that becomes possible.

That requires courage: the courage to listen, as much as the courage to speak. And the courage to collaborate across diversity and divides.

Democracy, in the end, is not defined only by what happens on election day. It is defined by what happens every day.

Explore the full mini-series here.

Liliana Gutan is a 2010 John Smith Fellow from Moldova. In her capacity as a member of the National Secretariat responsible for the successful implementation of these initiatives, the focus of Liliana’s work over the last three years has been on the Moldovan Chairmanships. This includes the organisation of numerous regional high level meetings, summits and conferences.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this piece are those of the individual author and do not reflect the views of The Foreign Policy Centre.

^[1] Benedicta Solf and Casey O’Neill, Moldova Shoulders Disproportionately Large Ukrainian Population, in the Shadow of the European Union and Russia, Migration Policy Institute, December 2025, https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/moldova-ukrainian-refugees

^[2] Stephen McGrath, Moldova narrowly votes to secure path toward EU membership after accusing Russie of interference, AP News, October 2024, https://apnews.com/article/moldova-elections-eu-referendum-russia-325cb2c13beb1d76565a6e2aadef971a; Claire Gilbody Dickerson, ‘Massive’ election interference by Russia, Moldovan officials say in decisive presidential vote, Sky News, November 2024, https://news.sky.com/story/massive-election-interference-by-russia-moldovan-officials-say-in-decisive-presidential-vote-13247385; Sarah Rainsford and Paul Kirby, Moldova’s pro-EU party wins vote mired in claims of Russian interference, BBC News, September 2025, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2rdlj8ejgo

^[3] Moldpres, Head of State on domestic violence and Ludmila Vartic case: We need justice, not speculation, May 2026, https://www.moldpres.md/eng/society/head-of-state-on-domestic-violence-and-ludmila-vartic-case-we-need-justice-not-speculation

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Civil Society

Human Rights

Rule of Law

Regions

Moldova

Resistance Is Not Enough: Rethinking the Belarusian Democratic Movement

Article by Palina Brodik

July 22, 2026

Resistance Is Not Enough: Rethinking the Belarusian Democratic Movement

A turning point is approaching for the Belarusian Democratic Forces, which emerged in response to the rigged presidential elections in 2020. They have begun to lose momentum after six years of tireless advocacy for democratic change – and it is time for the movement to have a serious conversation about its current shape and strategic direction.

Negotiations between the US and Belarusian authorities, which resulted in the release of hundreds of political prisoners, have deepened divisions within the movement into two opposing camps: the supporters of the hard-pressure approach that allows no compromise until the regime is defeated, and the proponents of a flexible approach that accepts limited concessions as a means of securing incremental gains. This dilemma revealed much more than differences in tactics. It exposed a rupture around the fundamental question: what kind of political actor must the democratic movement become if it is to reclaim Belarus? Every geopolitical shift — negotiations over prisoners, the end of the war in Ukraine, changing Western priorities — will only deepen the divisions and further delay the prospect of returning home.

The divide therefore runs deeper than tactics. It highlighted the very qualities that have sustained the movement over the past six years. Since 2020, it has drawn strength from shared memory, moral clarity, and organisational durability in the face of repression, exile and war. These qualities were essential for survival, but are insufficient for development.

Resistance preserves identity under pressure. However, it offers little guidance on how to prevail against a regime that has repeatedly proven more violent, adaptable, and strategically agile. Resilience, by contrast, requires the capacity to adapt without losing that identity. The question, then, is whether the movement has mistaken preserving its existing form for the ability to evolve — confusing resilience for resistance, organisational visibility for political viability.

Rebuilding political viability requires restoring three capacities that both repression and geopolitical turbulence have gradually eroded.

1. Continuity of political meaning beyond the life-span of the current movement. Belarus has experienced three major waves of democratic mobilisation in the 21^st century alone: in 2006, 2010, and 2020. Yet the history of the movement for our independence and European orientation goes back centuries. The regime does its best to break the chain of memory by obliterating historical milestones and replacing them with a state-sponsored narrative centred solely on the “Great Patriotic War”. Sometimes we contribute to this ourselves: each new generation believes the predecessors are not worth exploration if they have not succeeded – and they eventually replenish the ranks themselves. Yet democratic movements survive not through uninterrupted victories but through continuity of meaning. Otherwise every new mobilisation begins from zero.

2. The second capacity is autonomous political agency. Operating in exile, the movement naturally relies on international support. However, agency should not be built on external validation alone, such as through meetings with foreign country leaders and participation at global political fora. Legitimacy cannot be outsourced. A political actor that increasingly depends on outside confirmation is vulnerable to changing geopolitical priorities. And vice versa — it stays democratic and durable as long as it embodies the interests of the people it seeks to serve. No amount of international recognition can substitute for a living connection between democratic actors and the people they seek to serve.

3. Third, and perhaps most demanding of all, is the capacity for self-reflection and, consequently, adaptation. It requires honesty about our successes and failures, an awareness about the changing context, and acknowledging our structural limits to prevent us from falling into obsolete ways of thinking. Democratic movements fail not only when they lose their values, but also when they become unable to distinguish those values from the strategies once used to defend them. The former should endure; the latter should evolve. Сonfusing the two turns adaptation into betrayal and criticism into disloyalty. It takes a lot of courage to be intellectually and emotionally honest with oneself and to be able to admit the necessity of revision. But it is an important marker of a movement’s political maturity and a precondition for further growth.

Democratic movements can survive organisationally while collapsing politically. The Belarusian Democratic Forces risk precisely this: preserving their form while losing the capacity to act as a genuine political subject. This also has implications for foreign engagement: support is most effective when it contributes to adaptive political capacity rather than reinforcing institutional visibility.

To prevent the negative scenario, the movement should return to the fundamental question that structures this argument — what kind of political actor must the movement become if it is to shape Belarus’s future rather than be shaped by the country’s decline and shifting geopolitical realities?

Explore the full mini-series here.

Palina Brodik is co-founder and director of the Free Belarus Center, a member of the Coordination Council of Belarus and an official CCB delegate to the Congress of Regional and Local Authorities under the Council of Europe. Palina has over a decade of experience in human rights and election observation. She has collaborated with organisations including UNDP in Ukraine and Belarus, the US-based Advocates for Human Rights, and the Center for Civil Liberties and has taken part in international and domestic election observation missions. She has coordinated the Eastern European edition of the Personal Democracy Forum and the Ostrogski Forum, as well as four seasons of the festival of Belarusian culture and activism “Hučna Fest”.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this piece are those of the individual author and do not reflect the views of The Foreign Policy Centre.

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Civil Society

Democracy and Elections

Human Rights

Regions

Belarus

Civil Society Organisations Are Losing the Narrative War – How Can Trust Be Rebuilt?

Article by Joldoshbek Osmonov

July 20, 2026

Civil Society Organisations Are Losing the Narrative War – How Can Trust Be Rebuilt?

Civil society is how citizens can hold power to account. But what happens when organisations that exist to defend democratic life are no longer trusted to do so?

In functioning democracies, the answer barely needs asking. Transparent government, free expression, the right to challenge power and insist on the truth, all depend on a civil society that people believe in. It is through civil society that citizens engage with one another, mobilise in times of need, protect human rights, and advocate for change. When that belief erodes, so does the accountability it sustains.

For authoritarian governments, this erosion is not a problem. It is a strategy.

We are living in a time of profound uncertainty. The international rules-based order is no longer guaranteed. As authoritarianism and populism gain ground and democratic values come under pressure, civil society finds itself on the front line – and the forces working against it are organised and deliberate.

Propaganda, legal threats, and institutional failings are making civil society more vulnerable

Kyrgyzstan is a clear example of how civil society can become vulnerable. In April 2024, the country passed a law on ‘foreign representatives’, requiring NGOs that receive foreign funding to register with the government – echoing Russia’s and Georgia’s foreign agent laws, though without the same criminal liability.^[1] This reflects a broader trend: growing authoritarianism and a shrinking civic space that make it harder for citizens and organisations to speak out.

Kyrgyzstan is not an isolated case. Across countries like Russia, Belarus, Georgia, and other Central Asian countries, the pattern is the same: governments are using legal pressure and narrative control to delegitimise the organisations that hold them accountable. In Russia, organised civil society and NGOs have been systematically portrayed as a threat to traditional values and national identity – and that same propaganda playbook is being exported across the region, eroding credibility of civil society organisations beyond its borders.

The threat is not solely external however. Parts of the NGO sector have been undermining their own credibility by remaining overly donor-centric, lacking transparency and failing to communicate their work and impact effectively to the public.

The effect of this sustained pressure on civil society and internal shortcomings is a loss of trust. People no longer believe that civil society organisations tell the truth, stand for something, or have anything meaningful to offer.

And when the connection between people and civil society breaks down, civil society can no longer fulfil its democratic function. The gap between organisations and the communities they exist to serve becomes a gap that weakens democracy.

So how should civil society respond?

Some of the challenges are practical: funding, legal pressure, hostile information environments. But the deeper challenge is rebuilding trust and relevance. Old approaches and instruments are no longer enough. Civil society organisations need to think critically about how they are reaching people, how they come across, and whether they truly understand the context in which they operate.

Starting internally: transparency, accountability, and effectiveness are vital. Suspicions that NGOs are ineffective or opaque are widespread, and organisations need to take this seriously. Trust is rebuilt through actions, not just communication.

Yet internal renewal is only half the work. The deeper challenge is rebuilding the connection with communities – and that begins with an honest reckoning about how that connection was lost in the first place. It means going to where people already are: the school gate, the local market, the community group, the places where trust is built through presence rather than broadcast. It means speaking in a language that people recognise and not jargon that requires explaining. And it means reducing financial dependence on external donors by developing more diversified, locally rooted funding – through the public sector, social entrepreneurship, and direct community support.

Organisations need to be clear about both the work they do and what they stand for. The issues that civil society organisations address are often the issues that matter to people. When organisations can clearly demonstrate their relevance and impact, trust becomes easier to build and sustain.

Finally, where possible, constructive dialogue with governments should not be abandoned. Civil society organisations should seek to cooperate on practical, less politically contested challenges, building confidence and relationships before attempting to address more difficult issues.

What leaders need in this moment

Civil society may be losing the narrative battle – but that does not mean war is lost. Leaders need a clear-eyed understanding of how we got here and what is at stake.

The forces working against democracy and civil society – authoritarianism, populism, propaganda, misinformation – are organised, deliberate, and adaptive. Responding to these forces requires not just resilience, but the willingness to change: to be honest about failure, to engage with people where they are, and to earn trust rather than assume it.

The goal is not simply to survive. It is to rebuild the kind of civil society that people feel belongs to them, one that reflects their concerns, speaks to their realities, and importantly, one that they would fight to defend.

Ultimately, trust cannot be demanded, it must be earned, sustained, and renewed over time.

Explore the full mini-series here.

Joldoshbek Osmonov is the team leader of the Civic Engagement for Development Project in Kyrgyzstan funded by the Swiss Development Agency. He has extensive work experience in international development organisations, think tanks, and the civil society sector and possesses strong expertise in civil society, governance, public policy, and local politics. Joldoshbek holds a master’s degree in public administration from the University of Pennsylvania, the United States, and BA in international relations from the American University of Central Asia, Kyrgyzstan.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this piece are those of the individual author and do not reflect the views of The Foreign Policy Centre.

^[1] Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty, April 2024, Law Targeting Foreign-Funded NGOs Sends Chill Through Kyrgyz Civil Society, https://www.rferl.org/a/kyrgyzstan-foreign-agents-chill/32893000.html

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Civil Society

Regions

Kyrgyzstan

From Silence to Agency: What Post-Totalitarian Societies Must Learn from Their Stories

Article by Olga Reka

July 13, 2026

From Silence to Agency: What Post-Totalitarian Societies Must Learn from Their Stories

There was a time when war took my voice away. When reality becomes unbearable, reflection is reduced into mere observation. Silence ceases to be calm – it turns into the anticipation of terror from the sky. Under conditions of total war, people lose not only their homes, but also the capacity to narrate what is happening to them. Reason narrows to instinct. And everything that requires sensitivity – art, in particular – seems to fall mute. This is how we begin to treat culture as a luxury, as something that can be postponed until more stable times.

Yet the opposite is true: culture is not an adjunct to democracy; it is a precondition for agency.

We live in a time of eroding trust. Governments, media, and institutions are losing credibility. The frameworks that once defined democratic order no longer feel sufficient. Reality itself has fragmented. Policies and protocols may create structure, but they cannot resolve what is, at its core, a crisis of narratives – a rupture between identities, experiences, and meanings. This is not only a Ukrainian question. It is a European one.

Almost five years ago, storytelling and cinema became, for me, a way of resisting this fragmentation. A feature film script about the first months of the Russian full-scale invasion felt not like documentation, but rather reconstruction – an attempt to reclaim authorship over my own experience. In this sense, culture is not representation. It is a safe space where meaning is restored, and with it – the capacity to act.

Since 2022, I have noted a new habit: I catch myself observing people in large European cities as though through an invisible yet dense membrane. This distance is not geographical, but experiential. War creates a rupture that resists translation. And this gives rise to an uneasy question: is agency possible without the experience of existential risk?

Our unprocessed histories – colonial pasts, totalitarian traumas, genocide – return through narratives as recurring threats. This is why the figure of the antagonist is so central to contemporary storytelling. Yet the antagonist is not only what we fight against. It is what we recognise, ‘other’ and refuse to integrate.

Popular culture now offers telling examples. Squid Game does not invent a dystopia – it exposes the future shock of a traditional society. Adolescence does not resolve the problem of contemporary masculine identity – it renders the “accursed questions”^[1] even more complex. These stories resonate because they name what society already senses, but cannot yet articulate.

Post-totalitarian cultures – particularly in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia – face a different problem. They have inherited a cultural hero who is fundamentally passive: the silent dissident, the ironic observer, the one who survives but does not act. In such contexts, silence is mistakenly perceived as strength. In reality, it is often a symptom of learned helplessness. If this narrative remains unchanged, it will continue to reproduce itself – even under democratic conditions. A society that tells itself stories of endurance rather than action will continue to endure, but not to transform.

One of my most sincere sources of inspiration in recent months has been Václav Havel’s essay ‘The Power of the Powerless’, invoked by the Prime Minister of Canada during the 2026 forum in Davos. This text is not merely political commentary in the conventional sense. It is a cultural essay that describes how agency arises not from systems, but from small acts of redefinition – moments when individuals choose to refuse reproducing the scripts imposed upon them.

It seems that our societies today need not simply new content, but a new narrative structure, a different kind of cultural hero – one who acts without guarantees, speaks without certainty, and accepts vulnerability not as weakness, but as a condition of agency.

In Ukraine, the Revolution of Dignity of 2013-14 marked a defining moment when society’s agency not only became unmistakably visible, but also emerged as a force capable of safeguarding democratic values. Since the first months of Russia’s aggression in 2014, volunteer initiatives have quite literally helped keep the Ukrainian state functioning. Their work extends far beyond procuring military equipment and tactical medical supplies. Volunteers have built evacuation networks, supported internally displaced people, and helped devastated communities begin the long process of rebuilding.

The same spirit of initiative has also shaped Ukraine’s soft power abroad. Many of the country’s most effective international cultural and civic initiatives have not been orchestrated by the state but have grown organically through self-organisation and the networks of the Ukrainian diaspora. Ukraine has also demonstrated a remarkable ability to embrace digital innovation, with civil society playing a pivotal role not only in developing and implementing these innovations but also in rigorously testing their effectiveness and holding them to account.

Equally fundamental to Ukraine’s contemporary sense of agency is the ongoing reimagining of local identities across its towns and villages. In recent years, communities have explored their own histories through a wide range of cultural and civic initiatives, rediscovering local heritage, engaging with the complexities of multicultural memory, and dismantling narratives imposed from outside. In doing so, they are reclaiming the right to tell their own stories, and, ultimately, to define themselves on their own terms.

Not all our societies are ready for such a shift. Many are still organised around survival rather than transformation. And this is precisely why the delicate work within the realm of the sensuous – cultural practice – cannot be secondary. Without it, political change lacks psychological grounding.

Our current moment is marked by simultaneities. For some, agency now signifies the basic capacity to act; for others, it denotes a deeply existential experience of subjecthood.

Until quite recently, the ‘Old World’ reliably provided institutional frameworks through which an individual could choose a profession, a way of life, political convictions, partners, or a place to live. Yet reality is unsettlingly clear that no structure can guarantee any longer either meaning or safety.

At such a moment, action becomes inseparable from responsibility: values come at a cost; freedom is not a default condition; neutrality, as an avoidance of choice, no longer functions.

Our identity now is action. It is our daily practice, be it screenwriting, art, human rights advocacy, or a commitment to the rule of law. Alternatively, it can also be the rejection of all the above in surrender to a totalitarian trend.

Democracy today does not begin with institutions. It begins with a shift in how we tell our stories.

Explore the full mini-series here.

Olga Reka is a Ukrainian producer, writer and cultural storyteller whose work explores archetypal and transformational narratives shaped by themes of war, dignity, trauma and cultural memory. With over 150 hours of national television to her credit, she has created award-winning fiction projects and is known for story worlds that reflect the contemporary Ukrainian experience. She currently co-ordinates the publication project “Ukraine and Ukrainians”, a historical ethnographic art album of the NCFC “The Ivan Honchar Museum”, Gunia Project and The Ivan Honchar Charitable Foundation. Her recent films include the features “Nodokasa”, “Zenith” and “Misty in Places”; and the short “In the Shadows” (Grand Prix – Ukraina Festiwal Filmowy 2021; Special Jury Mention – Short of the Year 2021). Olga was also the showrunner and co-writer of “5baksiv.net”, Ukraine’s first web series and winner of the Grand Prix at Bilbao Web Fest 2017.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this piece are those of the individual author and do not reflect the views of The Foreign Policy Centre.

^[1] “Accursed questions” (often called proklyatye voprosy in Russian) are universal, foundational inquiries about human existence that never have a single, final answer.

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Ukraine Conflict

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Expert Look | Venezuela in Focus: Human Rights, Geopolitical Dilemmas, and International Law

Article by Foreign Policy Centre

January 19, 2026

Expert Look | Venezuela in Focus: Human Rights, Geopolitical Dilemmas, and International Law

The capture of Nicolás Maduro by the US military has triggered an immediate and polarised international debate. Questions of sovereignty, legality, and precedent have rightly come to the fore, reviving anxieties about the erosion of the rules-based international order and the risks of unilateral military action.

However, Venezuela’s collapse did not begin on the night of the intervention. It is the result of decades of institutional dismantling, systematic repression, and the hollowing out of democratic accountability. Over time, this internal erosion became entangled with external interests, regional power dynamics, and repeated failures of international engagement. The result is a crisis that is at once legal, political, humanitarian, and geopolitical, and one that resists explanation through any single analytical lens.

This expert analysis brings together four perspectives that speak to different, but interconnected, dimensions of the Venezuelan crisis. Laura Vidal, digital rights researcher and civil society observer, centres the human rights reality inside Venezuela, highlighting that legal debates detached from lived experience risk normalising repression and compounding victimisation. Andrew Gawthorpe, FPC Senior Fellow, analyses the emerging US strategy towards Venezuela, arguing that Washington is moving away from ‘regime change’ towards a more coercive model of ‘regime management’, with uncertain leverage and destabilising consequences. Dame Audrey Glover, FPC’s Chair of Trustees, sets out the international legal implications of the US operation, underscoring the dangers posed by selective adherence to foundational legal norms. Stefan Wolff, FPC Senior Fellow, examines the dilemmas facing Europe as it seeks to reconcile its commitment to a rules-based order with alliance politics and shifting power realities.

Taken together, these contributions expose the risks of selective concern: invoking international law only at moments of crisis, privileging geopolitical stability over accountability, or debating legality while disregarding human suffering. If Venezuela is to be understood and addressed in a meaningful way, these dimensions need to be held together, not treated as competing narratives.

The Human Rights Dimension of Venezuela’s Crisis

By Laura Vidal

Any assessment of Venezuela’s current crisis that sidelines human rights is necessarily incomplete. The most visible entry point remains the situation of political prisoners.^[1] Detentions continue to function as a revolving door: individuals are arrested, released under opaque conditions, and replaced by new detainees.^[2] Deaths in custody, enforced disappearances, and prolonged incommunicado detention remain documented practices.^[3] Torture centers continue to operate, and releases are often negotiated, partial, or discretionary rather than grounded in due process or judicial review. The pace of releases has been extremely slow, even as new arrests routinely follow moments of political tension, reinforcing a system based on fear rather than accountability.

This pattern, however, represents only one layer of a much longer process of deterioration. Venezuela’s human rights crisis has unfolded over years through the systematic dismantling of institutions, the erosion of checks and balances, and the capture of the justice system. The result is a complex humanitarian emergency that predates recent geopolitical escalations. Nearly a third of the population has left the country, many under precarious conditions that expose them to exploitation, abuse, and trafficking networks along migration routes. Those who remain face chronic shortages of basic services, including healthcare, electricity, and access to potable water.^[4]

The media landscape has been progressively constrained through closures, licensing pressures, legal harassment, and digital censorship. Accessing information online increasingly requires the use of circumvention tools, exposing users to heightened risks of surveillance and criminalisation. Reporting, documentation, and civic organising have consequently become high-risk activities.^[5]

This reality is often misrepresented as the consequence of international sanctions alone, despite the fact that economic collapse and institutional erosion began years before sectoral sanctions were imposed. Framing the crisis exclusively through sanctions obscures its structural roots and diverts attention from long-standing patterns of repression, impunity, and state failure.^[6] Human rights violations in Venezuela are not episodic; they are systemic, cumulative, and deeply embedded in the country’s governance model.

From Regime Change to Regime Management

By Andrew Gawthorpe

The US military operation against Nicolas Maduro represents a novel approach to foreign policy. “Regime change” is out and “regime management” is in. The Trump administration’s intention appears to be to leave the current Venezuelan government formally in place, while coercing it into adopting policies that will benefit US security and economic interests. Washington’s main demands for the government in Caracas include opening up the country’s oil wealth to American investment and control, severing friendly relations with China and Russia, and ending support for the government in Cuba.

Trump’s methods are nakedly imperial – a throwback to the “gunboat diplomacy” of the nineteenth century. It is notable that they even lack the justification, common in previous US military interventions, with the familiar claim that intervention will liberate the Venezuelan people from a dictatorial government. Instead, Washington is proposing to work with that dictatorial government in order to deliver profits for American oil companies.

From the perspective of the Trump administration, this strategy has obvious appeal. It lacks the commitment of resources and potentially lives to a long-term military occupation designed to transform Venezuela’s government, as was attempted in Iraq and Afghanistan. At the same time, it remains unclear whether this approach gives the US enough leverage over the government in Venezuela to achieve its goals.

Venezuela’s new leader, Delcy Rodríguez, has to avoid angering nationalist opinion at home – not least in her country’s military. She cannot go too far in appeasing the US. For their part, American oil companies also have little interest in investing in Venezuela, particularly while the current government remains in place. Meanwhile, President Trump’s attention seems to have wandered, with him now threatening new military action against Iran. As a result, what’s coming next in Venezuela remains highly unclear.

International Law and the Erosion of Legal Restraint

By Dame Audrey Glover

Article 2(4) of the UN Charter states:

“All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”

This article, part of the foundation of the post-Second World War international rules-based order, establishes a core principle against aggression, subject only to narrowly defined exceptions: self-defence and UN Security Council authorisation. This provision is binding on all States, regardless of whether they are members of the United Nations.

The action of US Forces entering Venezuela uninvited at night to detain President Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and place them in custody in the US to await trial, constitutes a breach of Article 2(4). Under International law, only an assault on another country by military means qualifies as a trigger for self-defence.

The consequence of the US operation is therefore a violation of Venezuela’s sovereignty, contrary to International Law. Furthermore, the intervention has not resulted in an attempt to restore democratic governance in the country. Maduro has been replaced by his Deputy, Delcy Rodríguez, without an election or consultation of the electorate and opposition– particularly significant given that Maduro himself overturned a prior electoral outcome to retain power. Her appointment undermines any argument that the intervention was undertaken in pursuit of democratic principles.

For his part, President Trump has said he will ‘run’ Venezuela remotely, a proposition that raises serious questions about both feasibility and legitimacy. It also prompts broader concerns regarding regional security and the future of Venezuela’s oil sector, including how it might be rebuilt and governed under such circumstances.

Stephen Miller, an adviser to President Trump, has said: “Forget international law. We live in a world that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power”. Such rhetoric reflects an explicit rejection of the legal norms that underpin international stability.

Recent events including the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, have further imperilled the rules-based international order at the core of which are the principles of individual liberty, intellectual and religious freedom, constitutional democracy and free trade. The most damaging has been the rejection of the principles of international law that the US helped to create. Venezuela stands as the latest example of this deterioration. The time has come to save these principles from extinction.

Europe and the Dilemmas of the Rules-Based Order

by Stefan Wolff

The apprehension of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro by the US military on the night of 3rd January is the first time in over three decades that the White House has conducted such an operation. The operation reflects Washington’s new national security strategy and its emphasis on hemispheric dominance, even as it sits in clear tension with international law. For Europe, the operation, and how to respond to it, poses multiple dilemmas.

The first dilemma concerns how to reconcile hitherto unwavering European support for a rules-based international order with the need to preserve what is left of the transatlantic alliance. This includes American security guarantees for European allies and continuing support for Ukraine’s war effort. The display of American capability and the meek reactions not only by Europe but also by Russia and China also demonstrated that for all the talk of a multipolar world order, Moscow and Beijing have few credible options to respond to American assertions of power. From a European perspective, this reality is in some respects reassuring, especially in the context of the Kremlin’s apparently insatiable revisionism in eastern Europe.

Closely related is a second dilemma: US ambitions for absolute dominance in the western hemisphere have revived Trump’s designs for Greenland, returning them to the transatlantic agenda where they spell potential for disruption—both in the sense of distracting attention from the actual threat of the Russian aggression against Ukraine and Moscow’s broader hybrid campaign elsewhere on the continent, and of potentially diverting critical resources away from deterring further Russian adventurism in Europe towards Arctic security, an area long neglected by both Europe and the United States.

The third dilemma is that the removal of Maduro from power is in line with long-stated European preferences for a democratic transition in the country, and as such should be welcomed. However, what seems to have resulted from the US operation is at best a face lift at the top of the Venezuelan regime, followed by internal power consolidation and increased external subservience to the demands of the mercurial incumbent of the White House. This dilemma also has wider implications. Europe may lack the hard power to effect regime change, but not the desire to do so. With probably more than half an eye on the situation in Iran, there are likely some figures in Europe’s political class who would not object too loudly or strongly if the US and/or Israel were adopting a more proactive stance on supporting protesters in Tehran and dozens of other cities. Yet externally driven regime change is hardly ever cost- or consequence-free, as the experiences in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, among others, vividly demonstrate.

European equivocation and prevarication in response to the US military operation against Maduro reflects the difficulty of navigating these dilemmas. Such ambivalence is neither a long-term solution nor will it allow Europeans to avoid discussing two equally unpalatable options: submitting to the whims of Trump, or an attempt to act independently in an increasingly hostile and lawless world. As so often, Europe is likely to fall back on muddling through: seeking to placate and flatter President Trump while ignoring the flaws and dangers of his foreign policy, and simultaneously trying to build towards the mythical promise of strategic autonomy. This approach rests on the hope that unconstrained, illiberal great power dominance within distinct spheres of influence does not become the new normal – one in which Europe is permanently downgraded to Washington’s, let alone Moscow’s or Beijing’s vassal.

For a comprehensive examination of the decades-long institutional erosion, systemic human rights abuses, and profound humanitarian crisis that have shaped contemporary Venezuela, see Laura Vidal’s Op-Ed: International law, institutional collapse, and the danger of selective concern, which situates the country’s current situation within a broader history of democratic decay, international inaction, and the human cost.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this piece are those of the individual authors and do not reflect the views of The Foreign Policy Centre.

^[1] Human Rights Watch, Venezuela: Political Prisoners Cut Off From the World, September 2025, https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/09/22/venezuela-political-prisoners-cut-off-from-the-world

^[2] Efecto Cocuyo, Efecto Paz #11 – Presos políticos después del 3E, January 2026, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhV_CpfoBpw&t=2821s

^[3] United Nations News, Venezuela’s National Guard linked to killings, torture and repression, UN probe finds, December 2025, https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/12/1166565

^[4] Human Rights Watch, World Report 2025: Venezuela, 2025, https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2025/country-chapters/venezuela

^[5] Puyosa, Azpúrua, Suárez Pérez, How Venezuela became a model for digital authoritarianism, Atlantic Council, July 2024, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/how-venezuela-became-a-model-for-digital-authoritarianism/; VE sin Filtro, Censura y represión digital en las elecciones presidenciales en Venezuela, 2025, https://vesinfiltro.org/noticias/2025-03-12-reporte-elecciones-presidenciales/

^[6] Nizar El Fakih, Aproximación al Régimen de Sanciones Internacionales y al caso de Venezuela, IDB, December 2020, https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://publications.iadb.org/en/node/29550&ved=2ahUKEwiWtLq81IiSAxWFVKQEHW0vBnUQFnoECBYQAQ&usg=AOvVaw3Ega3sYVRtvTyuCerIVUlw

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International Relations and Geopolitics

Regions

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Latin America

United States and Canada

United States

Op-ed | International law, institutional collapse, and the danger of selective concern

Article by Laura Vidal

January 15, 2026

Op-ed | International law, institutional collapse, and the danger of selective concern

In the immediate aftermath of Nicolás Maduro’s military extraction by the United States, protests erupted across major cities in Europe and the Americas calling for respect for Venezuela’s sovereignty. Venezuelans themselves, however, were largely absent from these protests. This contrast is not incidental. It reflects a deeper misalignment in how the crisis is being framed and debated.

For Venezuelans abroad, this moment has triggered yet another cycle of incomprehension. Many are confronted with responses that center almost exclusively on international law and precedent, while leaving aside the humanitarian and human rights crisis that has driven millions into forced migration or exile. This tension mirrors the ambivalent position of the region itself: shaken by a military intervention, yet unable to deny nearly two decades of institutional dismantling under authoritarian rule.

In the days following Maduro’s extraction, expressions of joy and relief within Venezuela circulated widely on social media platforms, often accessed through VPNs. Such reactions, however, carry real risks. Reports indicate that individuals have been detained, had their phones searched, and faced extortion when authorities discovered any reference to the intervention or signs of celebration.^[1]

Critics of the intervention have rightly underscored the gravity of violating territorial integrity and the risks such actions pose to international law. Carolina Sandoval, president of Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), pointed at regional concerns by the precedent being set, particularly given the long history of US military action in the hemisphere.^[2] At the same time, Sandoval also acknowledges a second, unresolved dimension: Venezuela has endured years of systematic repression under an authoritarian and violent government, and the need for accountability and a democratic transition remains urgent.

As political actors reposition themselves and new details emerge, another uncomfortable reality has become harder to ignore. Despite decades of anti-imperialist rhetoric, it appears increasingly evident to many analysts that negotiations with the United States were not imposed from the outside, but actively pursued by actors within the regime itself. This contradiction between discourse and practice further complicates efforts to interpret the moment through clean ideological binaries. Meanwhile, the continued presence of chavismo deeply hurts the hopes of a genuine transition to democracy.

As Atlantic Council senior research fellow Iria Puyosa has noted, key figures within the governing coalition now face an unprecedented challenge: meeting Washington’s demands while preventing internal fracture or a military coup. Those demands include regulatory stability and transparent property frameworks, precisely the institutional environment that chavismo systematically dismantled over years of rule.^[3]

Language also matters in this context. For Venezuelans, particularly victims of human rights violations, an exclusive focus on sovereignty and legal neutrality is not a technical debate but a political act. As journalist and human rights defender Luis Carlos Díaz told me, “framing the crisis solely in terms of territorial violation without acknowledging the criminal capture of the Venezuelan state produces a concrete effect: it normalises and protects those responsible for destroying constitutional order and committing crimes against humanity. From the perspective of victims, this is not neutrality: it is discursive revictimisation”.

This is not an isolated rupture

Any attempt to understand the current moment collapses if it treats the US intervention as an isolated rupture caused by a single set of actors. Venezuela was not a space free of foreign influence prior to this operation.

Cuban involvement in intelligence and repressive structures has been documented for years, facilitated through political and economic exchanges that included preferential access to oil.^[4] Russian military presence is also well established, including documented operations linked to the Wagner Group.^[5] Venezuela remains deeply indebted to Chinese creditors, owing roughly 20 billion dollars in loans that have shaped economic dependency and constrained policy autonomy. Iran has provided technological support that has translated into tools of repression, including the reported use of drones during demonstrations in 2024.^[6] This record complicates claims that a previously respected red line was suddenly crossed.

Venezuela’s institutional dismantling and democratic struggle did not begin recently. It spans nearly three decades, with the past ten years marking the most intense phase, one in which legal frameworks, state resources, and institutional checks were stretched or eliminated to extinguish meaningful separation of powers. Within this trajectory, the 2024 elections stand out as a critical turning point. For many Venezuelans, they represented the last available democratic mechanism, despite conditions that were neither free nor fair and despite widespread expectations of fraud.

International responses to these elections revealed a familiar pattern. While condemnations were issued, institutional action stalled. In late July 2024, the Organization of American States rejected a resolution calling on the Venezuelan government to provide transparency regarding the election results, with 17 votes in favor, none against, and a notable number of 11 abstentions.^[7] To this day, Maduro’s government has failed to present evidence substantiating its claimed victory.^[8]

None of this justifies violent interventions. It does, however, situate recent events within a longer history of institutional collapse, abandoned justice, and power vacuums already exploited by multiple actors across ideological lines. As the Venezuelan civil society organisation CEPAZ has warned, “the international community now faces one last major opportunity to mitigate a crisis that its own prolonged ineffectiveness helped create”.^[9]

Human rights cannot be bracketed out

Any analysis of Venezuela that sidelines human rights is analytically incomplete. The situation of political prisoners offers a stark entry point. Detention in Venezuela is constantly referred to by human rights defenders as a “revolving-door” system marked by deaths in custody, forced disappearances, and torture.^[10] So-called “releases” are often conditional, opaque, and reversible, functioning as instruments of control rather than steps toward justice. The pace of releases has been extremely slow, and new detentions are feared.^[11]

These practices are not confined to isolated events.^[12] Nearly a third of the population has fled the country, many under precarious conditions that expose them to exploitation and trafficking networks along migration routes. Inside Venezuela, the humanitarian crisis remains complex and multidimensional, affecting access to food, healthcare, and other basic services. Independent media has been blocked or captured, while transnational repression extends surveillance and intimidation beyond borders.^[13] Internet access is limited, unreliable, and often dangerous.^[14] Vulnerable groups, including Indigenous communities, face persistent attacks despite having once served as a central pillar of the regime’s legitimacy.^[15]

This reality is often misrepresented as the consequence of international sanctions alone, despite the fact that economic collapse and institutional erosion began years before sectorial sanctions came into force.^[16] The persistence of this narrative obscures responsibility and diverts attention from corruption and deliberate policy choices that hollowed out the state.

Amid widespread confusion and the difficulty of making sense of incomplete and often contested data, many of the most reliable sources on Venezuela today are civil society organisations, some of them working in exile. These organisations have been essential in documenting the multiple, overlapping layers that define the crisis, offering analyses that move beyond fixed or binary narratives. They continue to play that role despite operating under constant persecution, threats, and criminalisation inside the country, while simultaneously facing defunding and diminishing support from international partners and allies.

Weighing what already broke

It is expected that governments, political parties, and institutions interpret events through their own lenses and fears. The rupture represented by a US military extraction is serious, and the concerns it raises regarding its precedent and international law are legitimate. But treating this moment as the beginning of the problem distorts the balance of what is at stake.

The Venezuelan crisis ceased to be solely a domestic problem years ago. It has reshaped migration routes across the hemisphere, strained regional economies, and generated humanitarian emergencies well beyond national borders. It has also been sustained by economic interests and political arrangements in which multiple actors benefited from the regime’s permanence, even as institutions collapsed and accountability disappeared.

Focusing exclusively on the legality of a single act, while ignoring the accumulated damage that made such an act conceivable, risks repeating the same error that has defined international engagement with Venezuela for over a decade: reacting to moments of rupture while tolerating the slow dismantling that precedes them. If international law is to retain meaning, it cannot be invoked only at the point of intervention. It must also reckon with the long record of impunity, complicity, and selective concern that paved the way.

Laura Vidal is a digital rights researcher and civil society observer working across Latin America and international spaces. For nearly two decades, she has followed and documented Venezuela’s crisis from multiple vantage points, with a focus on authoritarianism, technology, and gender. She currently works with IFEX and Digital Action, and her research, analysis, and essays have been published by organisations such as Internews, The Engine Room, Mozilla, APC, EFF, and Global Voices, among others. Her work sits at the intersection of digital power, civic resilience, and the lived experiences of communities navigating repression and displacement.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this piece are those of the individual author and do not reflect the views of The Foreign Policy Centre.

^[1] Espacio Público, Detienen a cinco ciudadanos por celebrar detención de Maduro, Espacio Público, January 2026, . https://espaciopublico.ong/detienen-a-cinco-ciudadanos-por-celebrar-detencion-de-maduro/

^[2]In interview with Efecto Cocuyo, Efecto Paz #11 – Presos políticos después del 3E, January 2026, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhV_CpfoBpw&t=2821s

^[3]Iria Puyosa, Delcy Rodríguez’s untenable balancing act, Atlantic Council, January 2026, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/dispatches/delcy-rodriguezs-untenable-balancing-act/

^[4] Angus Berwick, Imported repression: How Cuba taught Venezuela to quash military dissent, Reuters Investigates, August 2019, https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/venezuela-cuba-military/; Armando.Info, La bitácora de los tanqueros fantasmas al servicio de la revolución, Armando.Info, April 2020, https://armando.info/la-bitacora-de-los-tanqueros-fantasmas-al-servicio-de-la-revolucion/

^[5] Silja Thoms, Más allá de Rusia: la actividad del Grupo Wagner en Venezuela, Deutsche Welle, June 2023, https://www.dw.com/es/m%C3%A1s-all%C3%A1-de-rusia-la-actividad-de-grupo-wagner-en-venezuela/a-66048041

^[6] Conexión Segura y Libre / VE sin Filtro, Censura y represión digital en las elecciones presidenciales en Venezuela, 2025, https://vesinfiltro.org/res/files/informe-presidenciales_2024-VEsinFiltro.pdf; Laura Bicker, Trump’s Venezuela raid has created chaos — and that is a risk for China, BBC News, January 2026, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly92dkxqvko

^[7] Yurani Arciniegas, Fracasa en el Consejo de la OEA resolución que pedía transparencia al Gobierno de Venezuela, France 24, July 2024, https://www.france24.com/es/am%C3%A9rica-latina/20240731-%F0%9F%94%B4-en-directo-petro-afirma-que-hay-graves-dudas-sobre-los-comicios-en-venezuela-y-pide-transparencia

^[8] Tiago Rogero, How Venezuela’s opposition proved its election win: ‘A brilliant political move’, The Guardian, August 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/10/gonzalez-proof-win-venezuela-election-vote-tally-maduro

^[9] Centro de Justicia y Paz (CEPAZ), La comunidad internacional tiene una última gran oportunidad en Venezuela de mitigar la crisis que su propia ineficacia ocasionó, January 2026, https://cepaz.org/la-comunidad-internacional-tiene-una-ultima-gran-oportunidad-en-venezuela-de-mitigar-la-crisis-que-su-propia-ineficacia-ocasiono/

^[10]Deutsche Welle, Muere bajo custodia un policía detenido en Venezuela, November 2026, https://www.dw.com/es/muere-bajo-custodia-un-polic%C3%ADa-detenido-en-venezuela/a-75463951

^[11] BBC News, “I thought I was going to die”: Jailed Venezuelan activist details brutality of prison life, January 2026, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgz5l6l7k7o

^[12] United Nations News, Venezuela’s National Guard linked to killings, torture and repression, UN probe finds, December 2025, https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/12/1166565

^[13] Matt Ford, Colombia: Venezuelan activists attacked in targeted shooting, DW (Reuters/AP), October 2025, https://www.dw.com/en/colombia-venezuelan-activists-attacked-in-targeted-shooting/a-74341871

^[14] Iria Puyosa, Andrés Azpúrua, Daniel Suárez Pérez, How Venezuela became a model for digital authoritarianism, Atlantic Council, July 2024, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/how-venezuela-became-a-model-for-digital-authoritarianism/

^[15] FundaRedes, Boletín N.º 47: Grupos armados y Estado venezolano vulneran el derecho a la vida de los pueblos indígenas, FundaRedes, November 2023, https://www.fundaredes.org/2023/11/01/boletin47-grupo-armados-y-estado-venezolano-vulneran-el-derecho-a-la-vida-de-los-pueblos-indigenas/; Human Rights Watch, World Report 2025: Venezuela 2025, https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2025/country-chapters/venezuela

^[16] Nizar El Fakih, Aproximación al Régimen de Sanciones Internacionales y al caso de Venezuela, Discussion Document No. IDB-DP-840, Inter-American Development Bank, December 2020, https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://publications.iadb.org/en/node/29550&ved=2ahUKEwiWtLq81IiSAxWFVKQEHW0vBnUQFnoECBYQAQ&usg=AOvVaw3Ega3sYVRtvTyuCerIVUlw

Topics

Civil Society

Human Rights

International Relations and Geopolitics

Regions

Latin America

Webinar Takeaways | Forging New Futures: Looking Ahead at the MENA Region

Article by Foreign Policy Centre

December 5, 2025

Webinar Takeaways | Forging New Futures: Looking Ahead at the MENA Region

The 28th of October 2025, the Foreign Policy Centre and the SEPAD project at Lancaster University co-hosted a public webinar, bringing together leading experts to examine the evolving dynamics in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). With particular focus on the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, the ongoing devastation in Gaza following October 7, and a complex web of shifting alliances—including the Beijing-mediated normalisation between Iran and Saudi Arabia—have created a fluid and uncertain political landscape. In the face of these developments, questions surrounding sectarianism, accountability, governance, and regional integration have taken on a renewed urgency.

The discussion titled “Forging New Futures: Looking Ahead at the MENA Region” was chaired by Poppy Ogier, FPC’s Communications and Research Manager, and featured contributions from, Dr Nour Abu-Assab, Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Centre for Transnational Development and Collaboration (CTDC), Dr Sanam Vakil, Director of the MENA Programme at Chatham House, and Professor Simon Mabon, Chair in International Politics at Lancaster University and Director of SEPAD.

The following takeaways emerged during the webinar session:

1. The Middle East post-October 7

One point that was evident before 7 October—and has become even clearer since—is that conflicts in the region are deeply interconnected. Stabilisation and resolution efforts cannot be siloed, but must take a holistic view of the region’s political and security architecture, as the sources of destabilisation are multiple, driven not only by regional actors, but shaped by the broader global landscape in which they operate.

The genocide in Gaza has significantly altered the political calculus of many states. While pre-October 7, regional governments had engaged in normalisation efforts with Israel, the scale of violence and destruction has led to significant public outrage, shifting the focus back to the unresolved Palestinian question and slowing or even stalling normalisation agreements. While the ceasefire is seen as a positive development, questions remain over the stability of the agreement and the prospects of meaningful conflict resolution. Regional stability can only be possible if Palestinian statehood and sovereignty is supported and achieved.

2. Israel’s military posture is increasingly destabilising

Israel’s military actions, particularly the June 2025 war with Iran and the September strikes on Qatar, have significantly reshaped regional perceptions. While Iran has traditionally been viewed as the primary destabilising actor, Israel’s use of military force across multiple fronts has led to a reframing of its role in the region.

The war with Iran revealed the limits of Tehran’s capacity for regional projection, exposing the symbolic nature of much of its deterrent power. Israel, by contrast, demonstrated clear military dominance. These developments have emboldened Israeli strategic postures while simultaneously drawing concern from neighbouring states.

The strike on Qatar further reinforced Israel’s image as a destabiliser. This event, in particular, has been critical in shifting diplomatic and security assessments across the Gulf and beyond, undermining trust in Israel’s role as a partner in regional security.

3. The role of Gulf States as regional stabilisers

Gulf states find themselves increasingly forced into a delicate balancing act. The interconnectedness of regional conflicts means that escalation in one area often has spill over effects elsewhere. This interdependence has heightened the strategic stakes for Gulf leaders.

Over the past two years, Gulf states have exhibited growing diplomatic agency. Their proactive efforts to mediate, negotiate ceasefires, and advocate for a political resolution to the Palestinian issue are driven not only by principle but by urgent self-interest. With limited military capacities, Gulf states are relying on diplomacy as their primary tool for regional stability.

Their advocacy for Palestinian self-determination, particularly in the aftermath of Gaza, has also become more vocal, positioning them as both mediators and stakeholders in any future regional order.

4. Integrity of information, justice, and accountability

Accurately describing what is happening in the region matters, not only for activism but for those who have endured this continuum of violence over the years. To do so meaningfully, we must consider regional history and the need for historical reparation. Understanding the root causes of conflict is essential if we are to have any hope of ‘forging new futures’.

In this context, the prospects for accountability take on particular urgency. They must go beyond prosecuting those directly responsible on the ground to include those with the power and influence to shape regional events. This is a responsibility that lies not only with MENA states, but also with Western actors. To move forward, we must look past the narrow confines of media-driven narratives and reflect more deeply on what meaningful accountability could look like in today’s international order.

5. Sectarianism, governance, and the crisis of the State

The region is caught between a collapsing old order and an unclear future. In this uncertain interregnum, long-standing political structures are being questioned, and moments of crisis are prompting communities to rethink the relationship between rulers and ruled. Even before 7 October, sectarian identities were under strain. Protests in Lebanon and Iraq (2019–2020) highlighted widespread frustration with sectarian governance. Meanwhile, actions like Houthi attacks in the Red Sea signalled new forms of cross-sectarian solidarity.

At the same time, sectarian divisions continue to be exploited for political purposes, particularly in attempts to reframe the region through an anti-Iran lens. But increasingly, the sharper divide is not sect versus sect, but people versus power—regimes versus citizens.

6. The role of the UK and the international community

The UK and international actors have played a long-standing role in shaping the dynamics of the MENA region, often through historical complicity and continued strategic interests. As several speakers noted, the UK’s current posture—marked by alignment with US policy and declining soft power—undermines its credibility. Rebuilding trust requires a shift toward principled engagement, meaningful accountability for harm caused (such as arms sales and extractive partnerships), and a commitment to global norms. The international community must take seriously its responsibilities, not only to uphold the rules-based order but to support regional-led processes for justice, accountability, and sustainable peace.

A full recording of the event is available here:

Topics

Conflict Resolution and Security

Regions

Middle East and North Africa

Who is standing up for media freedom – and who is not? A new Index has some answers

Article by Martin Scott and Mel Bunce

November 10, 2025

Who is standing up for media freedom – and who is not? A new Index has some answers

Every year, on 2^ndNovember, the United Nations and its member states condemn attacks on journalists. In 2025, this “International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists” is a particularly sombre occasion – with threats to journalists at an all-time high.

More than 120 journalists were killed in 2024 while doing their work.^[1] Countless others were arbitrarily detained, abused, and threatened both physically and online. News outlets are struggling to develop sustainable business models, and media freedom is at its lowest level globally in at least two decades, according to Reporters Without Borders.^[2]

This matters because a decline in media freedom can contribute to a deeper collapse in the systems that support democracy. As Nobel Prize-winning journalist, Maria Ressa, recently warned: “if journalism dies, democracy dies”.^[3]

Unfortunately, supporting media freedom is not a foreign policy priority for most countries. Multilateral fora – like the Media Freedom Coalition – encourage their member states to take action. However, these fora lack enforcement or accountability mechanisms.

To help address this gap, the Centre for Journalism and Democracy has launched a new annual index to try to hold states to account and encourage them to take action to promote media freedom beyond their borders. The Index for International Media Freedom Support (IMFS) evaluates 30 countries across three key foreign policy areas: diplomacy, funding, and safety/protection.^[4] The results paint a concerning and inconsistent picture – with no state performing strongly across all three categories.

Financial support for media freedom

According to the High-Level Panel on Public Interest Media, “globally… the first problem to be fixed is the insufficient volume of Official Development Assistance (ODA) that goes to media support”.^[5] On average, the 30 countries assessed in the IMFS Index allocated just 0.16% of their foreign aid to supporting independent journalism in 2023. Thirteen countries awarded less than 0.1%, while three – Latvia, Greece, and Slovenia – reported allocating 0%.

The only country that came close to the benchmark set by the Forum on Information and Democracy of allocating 1.0% of ODA to media support was Sweden – who contributed 0.91%. In 2023, Sweden spent over $51 million supporting initiatives such as rural radio stations in the Democratic Republic of Congo and strengthening environmental reporting across the Asia-Pacific region.^[6] Largely for this reason, Sweden came 2^nd overall in the 2025 IMFS Index.

Support for journalism safety and protection

Another group of leading experts – The High-Level Panel of Legal Experts on Media Freedom – has consistently advised governments that providing safe refuge to journalists at risk is one of the most effective measures to improve the climate for press freedom around the world.^[7]

The IMFS Index finds that only one country – Latvia (who came 9^thoverall) – had both an active emergency visa scheme for at-risk journalists and supported a national scheme promoting the safety of exiled media workers. Twenty-one of the thirty countries in the Index had neither measure in place.

Diplomatic support for media freedom

Lithuania was the highest ranked country in the 2025 IMFS Index, largely because of its diplomatic leadership roles in several UN initiatives relating to media freedom and journalist safety. Estonia (4^th overall) also performed well diplomatically, having served as co-chair of the Media Freedom Coalition in 2024, alongside Germany (equal 5^th).

The lowest scoring countries in the ‘diplomatic’ category of the IMFS Index were Japan, New Zealand, Portugal, South Korea, Spain, and Switzerland.

Making media freedom a foreign policy priority

The results of the 2025 IMFS Index suggests that political will – rather than state capacity – is a country’s greatest barrier to supporting media freedom worldwide.

The Baltic states – Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia – were amongst the smallest – but also the strongest performing. By contrast, four members of the G7 – the United Kingdom (equal 12^th), the United States (equal 12^th), Italy (equal 24^th) and Japan (28^th) – all ranked in the Index’s lowest ‘bronze’ category.

Due to the time lag in data reporting, the Index does not capture recent cuts to foreign aid that occurred in 2025 in the United States, the UK, Germany, France, and elsewhere. Therefore, future versions of the IMFS Index are likely to show an even bigger gap between some countries’ public commitments to media freedom and their actual support.

Given this, the High-Level Panel on Public Interest Media is right to argue that “what is needed now is not [a] reinvention of the wheel, but a new level of political will and a concerted commitment by governments to invest in what we know works – nationally and internationally.”^[8]

Hopefully, by publicly tracking countries’ performances, this new Index will help to generate more political pressure for meaningful action.

Martin Scott is a Professor of Media and Global Development at the University of East Anglia. His publications include, ‘Capturing News, Capturing Democracy’ (2024), ‘Humanitarian Journalists’ (2022), ‘Media and Development’ (2014) and ‘From Entertainment to Citizenship’ (2014).

Mel Bunce is a Professor of International Journalism and Politics, and the Director of the Centre for Journalism and Democracy at City St George’s, University of London. She was previously the Head of City’s renowned Department of Journalism. Her research focuses on journalism and democracy, crisis reporting, media freedom and international journalism.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this piece are those of the individual authors and do not reflect the views of The Foreign Policy Centre.

[1] Committee to Protect Journalists, 2024 is deadliest year for journalists in CPJ history, February 2025 https://cpj.org/special-reports/2024-is-deadliest-year-for-journalists-in-cpj-history-almost-70-percent-killed-by-israel/

[2] RSF, World Press Freedom Index 2025: over half the world’s population in red zones, n.d., https://rsf.org/en/world-press-freedom-index-2025-over-half-worlds-population-red-zones

[3] Kathimerini, Maria Ressa warns social media is ‘demolishing democracy’ at Athens forum, October 2025, https://www.ekathimerini.com/in-depth/society-in-depth/1282767/maria-ressa-warns-social-media-is-demolishing-democracy-at-athens-forum/

[4] Centre for Journalism and Democracy, The 2025 Index on International Media Freedom Support, n.d., IMFS Index is published by the Centre for Journalism and Democracy, and is available at https://jdem.org/the-imfs-index/; The 30 states included in the index are members of both the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee, and the Media Freedom Coalition (OECD-DAC).

[5] Forum on Information and Democracy, Statement of the High-Level Panel on Public Interest Media: The Economic Imperative of Investing in Public Interest Media, September 2025, https://informationdemocracy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/The-Economic-Imperative-of-Investing-in-Public-Interest-Media.pdf

[6] Forum on Information and Democracy, “The Forum on Information and Democracy calls for a New Deal for Journalism, June 2021, https://informationdemocracy.org/2021/06/16/the-forum-on-information-and-democracy-calls-for-a-new-deal-for-journalism/

[7] Media Freedom Coalition, High Level Panel of Legal Experts on Media Freedom, n.d., https://mediafreedomcoalition.org/who-is-involved/high-level-panel-of-legal-experts/

[8] Forum on Information and Democracy, Statement of the High-Level Panel on Public Interest Media: The Economic Imperative of Investing in Public Interest Media, September 2025, https://informationdemocracy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/The-Economic-Imperative-of-Investing-in-Public-Interest-Media.pdf

Topics

Human Rights

Media and Online Freedom

Back to the Future – Why a Human Rights-Focused Foreign Policy must keep up with Technology

Article by Helen Goodman MP

October 9, 2019

Back to the Future – Why a Human Rights-Focused Foreign Policy must keep up with Technology

“Technology is, of course, a double edged sword. Fire can cook our food but also burn us.”

Jason Silva, the Venezuelan-American filmmaker and public speaker

Last year marked the 70^th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The values and guiding principles underpinning this declaration may not have changed in 70 years, but the threats to human rights have. For those of us who still believe in the sanctity of human rights, we have to adapt to these threats.

One such threat is technology. Technology and human rights have always been intricately intertwined. From the mastering of civilian bugging in the 1970s and 80s, to the mass expansion of CCTV in the 1990s and early 2000s, to contemporary concerns over data mining and privacy rights we see today; technology has carved open an entire new dimension to human rights concerns in the past 30 years or so.

However, we are only really scratching the surface of the deepening complexities and growing capabilities of modern technology, and the seismic implications for human rights are only just becoming clear.

A case in point is the plight of the Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang Province, West China. The Uighurs are an ethnic Turkic peoples originating from East and Central Asia who form the majority ethnic group in Xinjiang, numbering approximately 11 million. Unlike the Han Chinese – who constitute the predominant ethnic group in mainland China – the Uighur population is primarily Muslim and culturally distinct from the rest of China’s population.

Since at least 1949, the Uighur community has been subject to systematic discrimination by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). However in the past four years, following a series of riots and sporadic violent attacks by Uighur Islamist and separatist groups, state persecution of the Uighurs and other ethnic Turkic groups has intensified – according to Human Rights Watch – to ‘a scope and scale not seen in China since the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution’.^[1] The purported reason for this intensification is the ‘de-extremification’ of the region.

This repression has involved the mass surveillance of the Uighur population and the reported internment of over one million Uighurs in ‘re-education camps’.[2] Where, according to detailed testimonies from former inmates, detainees are forced to undergo psychological indoctrination programmes designed to erase Uighur cultural and religious identity and foster loyalty to the Chinese state – including memorising CCP propaganda, giving thanks to President Xi Jinping and learning Mandarin.^[3]

State-of-the-art technology has been fundamental to the disturbing effectiveness of this state repression. Facial-recognition surveillance technology capable of identifying individuals by their ethnicity, supplied by surveillance giants Hikvision and Dahua, has been embedded ubiquitously across Xinjiang (and, incidentally, Tibet), including in gas stations and in hundreds of mosques. The Chinese government is also forcing Uighurs to download an app that monitors the content on their smart phones and searches for ‘illegal’ images,[4] and according to Human Rights Watch, is using ‘Wi-Fi sniffers’ that collect the unique identifying addresses of computers, smartphones, and other networked devices.[5]

The data obtained from such ‘sensors’ is being fed into a predictive policing program called the Integrated Joint Operations Platform (IJOP), which has been fully implemented for the first time in Xinjiang.[6] This platform uses Big Data to analyse the movements and activities of the Uighur population and make predictive judgements on the threat level of individuals. Often after evaluation of IJOP data, individuals are detained and sent straight to re-education centres.[7]

In short, technology has augmented a reality whereby the Chinese state has near Orwellian levels of omniscience and control over certain ethnic minorities. In Xinjiang, we are seeing just how long a shadow technology can cast over human rights.

It is not all bad news however. Technology also has enormous potential to defend human rights.

As the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) surmises, ‘Digital technologies are opening up numerous new possibilities to identify, analyse and remedy human rights risks.’[8] They identify a number of areas where technology is being harnessed to safeguard human rights. Data and information collection, for instance, has enormous potential. Satellites, drones, balloons and smart sensors like radio-frequency identification (RFID) can monitor and analyse land, ecosystems, movement of materials and product commodity chains to determine whether people’s land property rights are being violated, and whether products come from verified suppliers.[9] Apps and chatbots can also be employed to give workers a voice to express their concerns and report human rights abuses either directly to their own employers, to government authorities or to third parties.

An innovative best practice example of this is Global Fishing Watch (GFW). GFW is using data obtained from satellite technologies and cloud computing to produce immense datasets that identify fishing patterns and produce highly detailed visual maps and infographics that are shared online. This information equips authorities and stakeholders to tackle human rights abuses in the fishing industry, such as spotting vessels that have been at sea for extended periods of time and are therefore denying their crew a break from work and violating their working rights.

Furthermore, rather than being used for predictive policing and mass violations of privacy, the ‘Big Data’ generated by such technologies can feed into the business decision-making procedures and activities of private companies; enhancing the capacity of transnational corporations to identify and respond to human rights issues in their operations and commodity chains and make more human rights-centred decisions.[10]

Again, several examples are emerging of such practice. Once such example is Laborlink – a mobile app that allows factory workers to report workplace abuses and provide general feedback – either identified or anonymously.[11] Over one million workers in 16 countries have so far utilised the app, resulting in a vast improvement in workplace rights. For example in Bangladesh, through the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, Laborlink partnered with ELEVATE to build a first-of-its-kind technology-driven helpline that receives calls on over 500 issues a month, including complaints about wages and benefits and fire dangers inside and outside factories.[12]

A similar app, WorkIt, has been instrumental in securing significant victories for Walmart workers in the United States – including substantially better corporate-wide pay and leave policies – through a campaign orchestrated by United for Respect.[13]

Consequently, as well as posing a threat to human rights, technology provides a considerable arsenal that concerned governments, corporations and NGOs can – and must – utilise. However we cannot just fight fire with fire. Policy and legislation must also keep up with the technological dimension of human rights. Governments and legislators must therefore review the options available to them to abate human rights abuses made possible by technology. But just what options are available? The answer is several.

An emerging legal vehicle that will have a crucial role to play is the Magnitsky powers. Leading for the Labour Party, I managed to secure the inclusion of Magnitsky clauses in the UK Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act in Spring 2018 Magnitsky legislation grants government ministers the power to issue sanctions and other punitive measures against individuals or entities engaging in human rights abuses. Crucially, this includes private companies.

On formally leaving the European Union, the UK will be able to autonomously apply sanctions using the Magnitsky clause more easily[14], and will therefore possess a much needed lever with which to target companies selling technologies being used to violate human rights for entering into contracts with the perpetrators. Like, for example, Hikvision – a move that is already being considered by the United States owing to their operations in Xinjiang. And Hikvision is just the tip of the iceberg.

A second lever available to states is export controls – a policy initiative encouraged by Human Rights Watch in the context of the Uighur crisis.[15] Identifying appropriate export control mechanisms to deny human rights abusing states from gaining access to the technology being used to violate basic rights is critical, and Labour has committed to strengthening export controls as part of our human rights-focussed foreign policy. By taking this simple step, concerned onlookers will stop unwittingly equipping the very human rights abusers they are condemning.

Thirdly, governments must engage with the technology sector. Technology companies need to be made aware of the human rights risk that their business operations can and do contribute to, and assurances must be sought that they will not enter into contracts with government authorities or any other organisation that is committing gross human rights abuses. If necessary, new regulations should be introduced to facilitate this. A bad reputation is bad for business, so encouraging leading tech sector giants to recalibrate their business models and tender policies in line with human rights realities could prove an effective tool in mitigating the detrimental impact technology can have on human rights, and hopefully others will follow their example.

Fourthly, governments’ need to cooperate to introduce a clear international legal framework for internet governance. Currently the free for all resembles the 16^th Century law of the sea as pirates abound – there are no shared controls on terrorism, child protection, intellectual property or tax and as more and more economic activity moves to the web more and more human activity takes place in an anarchic value free vacuum. As long as such a gap exists in the legal architecture, human rights abusers using the web to commit their crimes will continue to find dark corners to hide in.

As we enter the third decade of the 21^st century, the inexorable advance of technology will continue apace. We are entering the era of 5G (as we know all too well from the Huawei issue), artificial intelligence and potentially even commercial flights into space. If we are to realise the grand and noble vision of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights expounded 70 years ago democratic governments, civil society, human rights activists and other entities engaged in the global struggle for human rights must adapt to the new reality technology is presenting us. We must therefore recognise and respond to the deeply disturbing implications for human rights posed by technology, but also harness its enormous potential to take the fight to the worst perpetrators.

Failure to do either may render the era since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights a mere footnote in history, rather than a blueprint of a future reality for the millions being oppressed in the present.

Helen Goodman MP is a Shadow Minister for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs

[1] Human Rights Watch, Eradicating Ideological Viruses: China’s Campaign of Repression Against Xinjiang’s Muslims (Human Rights Watch, 2018), https://www.hrw.org/report/2018/09/09/eradicating-ideological-viruses/chinas-campaign-repression-against-xinjiangs

[2] Adrian Zenz, New Evidence for China’s Political Re-Education Campaign in Xinjiang China Brief, vol. 18, issue 10, May 15, 2018, https://jamestown.org/program/evidence-for-chinas-political-re-education-campaign-in-xinjiang (accessed 2019)

[3] Malik, ‘Muslim inmates in China detention camp forced to eat pork, drink alcohol and physically tortured as some commit suicide’

[4] Adam Lynch, App targeting Uighur population censors content, lacks basic security, Open Tech, August 2018, https://www.opentech.fund/news/app-targeting-uyghur-population-censors-content-lacks-basic-security/

[5] Human Rights Watch, China: Big Data Fuels Crackdown in Minority Region, February 2018, https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/02/26/china-big-data-fuels-crackdown-minority-region

[6] Ibid (footnote 5)

[7] Ibid (footnote 5)

[8] Davide Fiedler, Is technology a game-changer for human rights in corporate value chains?, WBCSD, November 2018, https://www.wbcsd.org/Overview/Panorama/Articles/Is-technology-a-game-changer-for-human-rights-in-corporate-value-chains

[9] Ibid (footnote 8)

[10] Ibid (footnote 8)

[11] Ibid (footnote 8)

[12] Good World Solutions, https://goodworldsolutions.org/

[13] Teke Wiggin, Labour Organizers Look To Apps To Reach Wider Audiences, Huffington Post, July 2018, https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/labor-organizers-apps-audiences_us_5b47a609e4b022fdcc577a47?ri18n=true

[14] According to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee the FCO has been equivocating on the extent to which sanctions under the 2018 Act can be applied whilst the UK is still a member of the EU, particularly in relation to elements related to trade. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have their own Magnitsky legislation whilst being members of the EU https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmfaff/1703/170305.htm

[15] https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/report_pdf/china0918_web2.pdf

Topics

Civil Society

Democracy and Elections

Freedom from Torture and Ill-treatment

Human Rights

International Relations and Geopolitics

Media and Online Freedom

Regions

United Kingdom

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Who is standing up for media freedom – and who is not? A new Index has some answers

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Back to the Future – Why a Human Rights-Focused Foreign Policy must keep up with Technology

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