Exploring civil society perspectives on the situation of human rights defenders in the Commonwealth of Independent States

Figures & data

Table 1. Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS): international human rights law – obligation to protect human rights defenders (HRDs) (status/ratification of relevant UN Treaties), date of last Universal Periodic Review (UPR), current global rights ranking, etc.

UN treaty	Armenia	Azerbaijan	Belarus	Kazakhstan	Kyrgyzstan	Moldova	Russia	Tajikistan	Uzbekistan
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) (Art. 2)^a	Binding	Binding	Binding	Binding	Binding	Binding	Binding	Binding	Binding
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) (Art. 2)^a	1993	1992	1973	2006	1994	1993	1973	1999	1995
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) (Art. 3)^a	1993	1995	1981	1998	1997	1994	1981	1993	1995
Human Freedom Index (Global Ranking)^c	61/162	113/162	85/162	75/162	78/162	65/162	115/162	138/162	n.r.
Global Human Rights Ranking^b	90/173	138/173	143/173	103/173	94/173	63/173	159/173	152/173	134/173
Population (millions)^d	2.96	10.11	9.39	18.75	6.59	2.62	145.9	9.53	34.2
Per capita gross domestic product (GDP) (US$)^d	4267	4214	6411	9099	1226	4551	10,126	859	1685
Date of last UPR	2020	2018	2020	2019	2020	2016*	2018	2021	2018

Note: n.r., Not ranked.

Sourced: World Bank.

*2021 UPR data for Moldova were not available at the time of writing.

Source c: Vásquez and McMahon (2020).

Source b: https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/human_rights_rule_law_index/#Armenia.

Source a: https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/15/TreatyBodyExternal/Treaty.aspx?CountryID=99&Lang=EN.

Table 2. The issue salience of human rights violations affecting human rights defenders (HRDs) in civil society organizations’ (CSOs) Universal Periodic Review (UPR) submissions in Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries, 2016–21 (percentage of all quasi-sentences, N = 8327).

Human rights violation	Legal basis for rights violation	% of Corpus
Repressive legislation (generic references)	UHDR (Art. 2) Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration. ICCPR (Art. 2)	33.5%
Failure to address past UPR recommendations on HRDs	UDHR (Art. 2), ICCPR (Art. 2)	12.2%
Authorities’ maladministration of justice (false arrest and arbitrary detention/imprisonment)	ICCPR Article 14, ‘All persons shall be equal before the courts [ … ] everyone shall be entitled to a fair and public hearing […]’	12.1%
Threats, violence, torture and murder	UDHR (Art. 3) Everyone has the right to life, liberty and the security of person. ICCPR (Art. 9)	11.1%
Measures undermining CSOs’ ability to receive funding	UDHR (Arts 19, 20); ICCPR (Art. 2.2)	10.9%
Freedom of association	UDHR (Art. 20) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association. ICCPR (Art. 22)	6.2%
Freedom of expression/Censorship	UDHR (Art. 19) Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression ICCPR (Art. 19)	5.1%
Impunity for offenders/need for greater police investigation and protection	UHDR (Art. 2) Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration. ICCPR (Arts 2, 14)	4.8%
State surveillance	ICCPR (Art. 17) No one shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his [sic] privacy, family, home or correspondence […]	2.1%
National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs)	The Paris Principles A/HRC/39/21^a	1.3%
Abduction/enforced Disappearance	International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance^b	0.6%

Sources: ^ahttps://undocs.org/A/HRC/39/21/.

^b https://www.ohchr.org/en/hrbodies/ced/pages/conventionced.aspx/.

Table 3. Discursive framing of human rights defenders (HRDs) in civil society organizations’ (CSOs) Universal Periodic Review (UPR) submissions in Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries, 2016–21 (percentage of all frames, N = 1421).

Frame category	Discursive frame	% in Corpus
Normative	Independence from government control	34.2%
	HRDs and promotion of peace	17.2%
	Fairness/rule of law	15.3%
	Accountability/criticality of government	11.9%
Experiential	HRDs’ fear/terror/reprisals	7.5%
	State defamation/smearing/abuse of HRDs	5.8%
	Criminalization/incrimination of HRDs	3.3%
	HRDs’ vulnerability/need for protection	2.7%
	Suffering of HRDs	2.1%

Table 4. Collective action framing on human rights defenders (HRDs) in civil society organizations’ (CSOs) Universal Periodic Review (UPR) submissions in Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries, 2016–21 (percentage of all frames, N = 1959)

Frame	% in Corpus
CSOs’ advocacy specific government legal and policy actions for HRDs	35.4%
(Generic) calls to ensure ‘prevent(ion)/stop/end/cease/cessation’ of state rights violations of HRDs	21.5%
Specific calls for ‘demonstrate/protest/mobilise’ for HRD rights	18.3%
Imploring people to act to ensure ‘release/freedom/liberation’ of HRD detainees	17.2%
Government receptiveness – negotiation and dialogue	5.7%
Solidarity	1.9%

Vásquez, I., and F. McMahon. 2020. The Human Freedom Index. Washington: Cato Institute/Fraser Institute.

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