Accompanying human rights activists to protect them from danger

Lrubenstein — Fri, 30 May 2008 12:48:27 -0500

Peace Brigades International (PBI) sends international observers to accompany human rights activists who are threatened by the government or paramilitary organizations. They serve as a reminder to perpetrators of human rights abuse that the international community is watching. In the event of an abduction, the observer alerts authorities in the country, their own native government and activists around the world. This brings the influence of the foreigner’s government and international contacts to bear on the perpetrators.

As a tactic, international accompaniment was developed to protect Guatemalan civil society activists in the early 1980s. At that time many activists were being watched, terrorized, and killed by agents working on behalf of the government. Over the next decade PBI and groups like them sent hundreds of international observers to Guatemala. Later, in 1987, PBI was invited by organizer Bishop Medardo Gomez to bring observers to El Salvador. In El Salvador, PBI was widely embraced and they were soon overwhelmed with requests for observers. Since then PBI has expanded. Peace Brigades now operates in Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia, and Indonesia. Similar programs exist in other countries around the world.

International accompaniment is difficult for both human rights activists and volunteers. Activists can feel constrained by the continual presence of another person in their daily lives. For the volunteers, escorting involves constantly following someone else’s schedule, which is similarly constraining. In addition, accompaniment is stressful for both activists and volunteers due to the dangers they both face.

Although the volunteers are the most visible symbol of the accompaniment tactic, the success of the approach depends on an international awareness of the situation through an extensive support network of concerned individuals and supporting organizations. This network is ready to apply special pressure in crisis situations involving PBI volunteers and the people they are protecting. The grass-roots network consists of thousands of concerned individuals in many countries. It is activated when there is a need for broad based pressure. By using emails, faxes and letters sent to authorities in the country in which the crisis is occurring, the recipients are made aware that the eyes of the international community are upon them. In selective situations, PBI also uses a high-level alert network of influential political and diplomatic authorities when it wishes to apply potent pressure. These are people who have especially strong influence on the governmental authorities in the country concerned.

To coordinate the work of the volunteers doing the accompaniment and the extensive support network, each project has a Project Committee and a Project Office. The latter is usually located outside the project country for security reasons, and is staffed by a Project Coordinator and local volunteers.

While the effects of accompaniment, like any deterrent method, are hard to quantify, the impact of accompaniment in the minds of the citizens of a country was demonstrated with the return of Guatemalan refugees. The refugees, when negotiating their return with the Guatemalan government, insisted that the government sign an agreement approving the right of international accompaniment. The refugees’ successful return help inspire rapid developments in the Guatemalan peace process, contributing to the peace accords in 1996.

Side by Side: Protecting and encouraging threatened activists with unarmed international accompaniment

bharris — Fri, 25 May 2007 20:08:14 -0500

Side by Side

by Liam Mahony

Download full notebook below.

Since the mid-1980s, human rights groups and other activist organizations being targeted with repressive abuses have been calling on international NGOs to provide them with direct accompaniment by international field workers. These field workers – usually volunteers – spend twenty-four hours a day with threatened activists, at the premises of threatened organizations, in threatened communities or witnessing public events organized by threatened groups. The international presence serves as a deterrent against the use of violence. In order to ensure this deterrence, these international accompaniment organizations are part of transnational networks poised and ready to mobilize political pressure against perpetrators should their volunteers witness any attacks or should their clients be further threatened.

"I can say with certainty that the fact that we are alive today is mainly because of Peace Brigades’ work." – Luis Perez Casas, Lawyer’s Collective Jose Alvear Restrepo, Bogotá, Colombia

International protective accompaniment is the physical accompaniment by international personnel of activists, organizations or communities threatened with politically motivated attacks. Peace Brigades International has been developing this tactic since the mid-1980s, sending hundreds of volunteers into different conflict situations around the world. PBI currently sustains a presence of about 80 people working in several conflicts, responding to requests for accompaniment from all kinds of threatened civil society organizations.

Accompaniment can take many forms. Some threatened activists receive 24-hour-aday accompaniment. For others the presence is more sporadic. Sometimes team members spend all day on the premises of an office of a threatened organization.Sometimes they live in threatened rural villages in conflict zones. This accompaniment service has three simultaneous and mutually-reinforcing impacts. The international presence protects threatened activists by raising the stakes of any attacks against them. It encourages civil society activism by allowing threatened organizations more space and confidence to operate and by building links of solidarity with the international community. And it strengthens the international movement for peace and human rights by giving accompaniment volunteers a powerful first-hand experience that becomes a sustained source of inspiration to themselves and others upon their return to their home country. This tactical notebook will analyze how protective accompaniment works, based on the substantial experience of PBI in Colombia, Indonesia, Mexico, Guatemala, Haiti, Sri Lanka and El Salvador. Since the 1990s, numerous other organizations have also provided protective international accompaniment in other settings, modifying the approach according to their particular identity and mission. In the final section of the notebook I will also offer a brief comparative discussion of several of these experiences.

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English, accompaniment

Accompanying human rights activists to protect them from danger

Side by Side: Protecting and encouraging threatened activists with unarmed international accompaniment

Side by Side