Tactics and tools for the protection
of Human Rights Defenders

The field protection of human rights defenders is one of the greatest challenges for the international community. All new paths explored go into uncharted territory, and we still have to ask ourselves some key questions to obtain a sense of direction and as a result of this process learn directly from our experiences.

This is the purpose of this document: to analyse the deployment of international observers in a conflict scenario in order to protect human rights defenders.
We will review some key concepts about the international arena and the role that human rights NGOs are currently playing in it. After that we will analyze the capacity of protection offered by international observers (that is, their capacity to dissuade attacks against human rights defenders), which is based on the political cost they are able to generate against such attacks, and we will propose an expanded role for international observers to be played in different scenarios and different stages of a conflict with human rights violations. We will deal as well with some key aspects of strategies when selecting a work scenario for deploying international observers: the potential transgressors must be potentially affected by the international pressure, and the institutions of the State and Government must be functioning (in order to secure the proper actions and reactions to the international pressure channeled through the presence of international observers). We will also propose a whole set of procedures and activities in order to fulfil the aim of protection