CECI HEINEN: Hello everyone! This is Ceci Heinen from the Minnesota Daily and you are listening to In The Know, a podcast dedicated to the University of Minnesota. 

I am coming to you with a very special episode of In The Know featuring my interview with Mary Lawlor, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders. Lawlor was in town this week giving the keynote address at the Human Rights Department’s Scallen lecture series. 

We sat down together to discuss her role as special rapporteur and the unique view she has into the status of global human rights. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Mary Lawlor. 

MARY LAWLOR: Is there an internet that I can use here? Just in case I need to look up something for this young woman.

HEINEN: Well, I’m Ceci Heinen. I’m really honored to speak with you. Do you think you could start by just introducing yourself and introducing your position and what you do? 

LAWLOR: Yeah, so my name is Mary Lawlor. I am the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders. I was appointed by the UN Human Rights Council in 2020. Uh, you serve in a voluntary capacity for six years. I should be finished at the end of April because my six year term is nearly up. 

To be appointed, you have an interview with an ambassador from each of the five world regions, and they produce a shortlist, and the shortlist goes to the UN Human Rights Council President and the UN Human Rights President floats the names, the three names that are shortlisted around the various regional bodies, the regional groupings in the United Nations.

And outta that process, somebody gets appointed. So I was appointed. Now what I do is I try and implement insofar as I can, the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, which was adopted 27 years ago at the General Assembly. This declaration was adopted by consensus and basically it says that everyone has the right to defend rights.

HEINEN: Mm-hmm. 

LAWLOR: And human rights defenders are defined as people or organizations, individuals or organizations, that seek to promote and protect human rights and fundamental freedoms peacefully. So that’s, that’s the overarching sort of guide that I, I use. And to carry out the work, there are a couple of tools that we have.

The first one is sending formal letters called communications to offending governments about cases or about unjust laws, or something like that. The second one is being in touch all the time with human rights defenders around the world to see what, what their situation is like, and to study the trends and the risks that they’re facing. 

And then the third thing that we must always bear in mind as we come from a gender lens, through the work. And then if you want to know just exactly what I’m supposed to do, I report to the UN Human Rights Council, the UN General Assembly, two country visits a year, and a lot of lobbying with governments. Yeah, so that’s basically it. 

HEINEN: Could you talk a little bit about what type of research goes into your communications? Like I know you were just telling me about how much you’re traveling in the next couple months. And are you visiting people like going on the ground to speak with human rights defenders? What kinds of research do you do to inform your communications? 

LAWLOR: Okay, well, I have a very skilled team who draft the communications and, uh, communications are drafted on, on the basis of two kinds of input. One is when an organization or a university, or anybody, makes a complaint, uh, about the way a human rights defender is being treated.

Might be somebody who’s been killed. It might be somebody who’s been given a very long sentence. It might be somebody who’s been attacked, uh, physically or, um, an assassination attempt or attacked online. And as we know, women particularly are smeared online so much because of, not only because of who they are, but because of what they do, LGBT people.

So it can be any number of types of violations that people get in touch with us about. And then the team has to analyze that information, check out whether it’s credible and check with other sources to make sure that it is, uh, legitimate. 

And then a communication is drafted. Equally, we have hearings with human rights defenders where they speak to us about what they’re facing and sometimes, often actually outta those hearings, we decide to take up cases and follow the same format then.

HEINEN: Interesting. Um, could you tell me, if you can, about one time where your communications and your team’s work has directly made a change or directly stopped a, whatever it may have been? 

LAWLOR: Well, the thing is, you know, working for human rights is collective. Everybody has their part to play. So individuals and non-governmental organizations, their job in my view, is to collect information, is to mobilize action, is to, uh, then transfer information. 

And also to transfer information to people like me. And governments, but people in, in my case, they, if they send it to me and I take up the case, my role that I see myself as having added value in is my advocacy with governments. So, I never take credit for anything that happens, but I, we do know that in about 25% of the cases that we take up, there’s been a positive outcome. 

Now, that doesn’t mean the person has been released, for example, in China with, uh, people serving very long sentences. Anything from, uh, say 15 years up to life imprisonment. We have seen examples where two human rights defenders, one of them was given a cell with a light and reading material. 

And, uh, another was allowed to see his family and lawyer. Now they seem like very little things, but if you’re a defender that is innocent and serving a very long sentence in a Chinese jail, it means a lot to be able to read books and have a bit of light and to see your lawyer in your family.

So that would be an example of a small victory for us. Um, when I say for us, for anybody who was involved in those cases. Equally, my senior advisor, Ed, managed to get 200 people, which involved human rights defenders in their families, out of Afghanistan after the Taliban took over. 

Uh, he just stayed up for 48 hours and worked nonstop to get all these defenders inherit that we had been in touch with out and their families. Another time the Egyptian ambassador rang me to tell me that one of the cases that I’d taken up, in fact it was more than one, it was two or three, they had been released. Which was so unexpected. Because Egypt is not known for its human rights record. So they’re examples.  

HEINEN: I feel like sometimes with human rights it can feel like you’re putting a lot into something and no one is hearing your voice. And I’m sure a lot of human rights defenders that you have interacted with feel that way. And so, how do you maintain motivation in this line of work when sometimes it can feel like nobody’s caring or nobody’s listening to you? 

LAWLOR: Well, I think the first thing is you have to understand that that’s probably the case. In this world, there are very few people who are willing to take action from the government side to help protect human rights defenders. So that has to be your starting point. 

And then I think you just have to build in your human rights, work into your daily life. You know, you, you get up in the morning, you know you’re going to do some human rights work, uh, you know that you may or may not be successful. Um, and probably not, but you still have to try.

I think trying and perseverance are the things that are most important, uh, and to try and keep your motivation going. You know, you have enough small victories. Uh, to, to motivate you and you meet such inspiring human rights defenders and they motivate you. And then, you know, you just take care of, you know, things that make you happy as well.

Like, you see your friends, you in my case, have long baths and, uh, listen to a lot of music and everybody finds whatever it is that’ll keep them, you know, motivated. 

HEINEN: Yeah, true. Could you tell me a little bit about what it’s like at the UN General Assembly? I think a lot of listeners kind of see the UN General Assembly as like very separate, all these people coming together to talk, but what really happens from it? You know, like, is change made? And so since you’ve sat and obviously spoken there, um, could you just tell me a little bit about what it’s like? 

LAWLOR: Well, despite everything, I’m still a believer in the UN system because it is the only forum, in which all the member states, 193 of them, come together to discuss, debate, listen to each other. And, uh, decide on what resolutions to pass and what not to pass. 

And member states are different. They all have their own, uh, political and strategic interests for a start, and that interferes with the, kind of, the consistency and the impartiality of what they’ll support and what they won’t support. But, there are definitely times when language gets put into resolutions, uh, which enables people from civil society and human rights defenders to keep reminding governments of what they have agreed to. 

And I think it’s really important to keep reminding governments of what they have freely agreed to. And, and the thing is like. I think NGOs often take on all the kinda suffering of the human rights abuses. And they feel guilty that they’re not able to change them as they would wish. But, you know, it’s not the role of NGOs to protect human rights defenders. It’s the role of states to protect human rights defenders. 

And I think sometimes you have to just remind yourself of that as well, you know? But when you go into the general assembly, I was terrified. I mean. I still am, uh, every time I go there because it’s a big room. You’ve seen the room. You sit up at the table and every, you know, it’s all very formal and you know, you’re introduced.

You give your seven minute speech, and then you have all the states who want to, uh, for 43 minutes, asking you questions, and then you get another 10 minutes at the end to answer the questions. Now the way we do it is all the, all the team set up a Google document and they write down the questions as they’re happening and they kind of give me answers to say, and that’s how we manage, you know?

HEINEN: That sounds stressful. 

LAWLOR: It is stressful. 

HEINEN: How long? Uh, do you and your team prepare for that? 

LAWLOR: The general assembly? Well, the general assembly, it’s really a rolling document because you don’t know what states are going to ask questions. But you generally know that people like China will get up at every. Well, you know, Russia will get up at every, um, you know, and ask a question. 

So in advance of the presentation the colleagues always prepare draft answers on specific countries that they know are going to. So they look up the recent cases and try and say, find something good the state has done so we can also say that, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah.

HEINEN: I know you talked about this a bit yesterday during your lecture, but could you tell me a bit about the interactions you’ve had with the United States specifically, like have you written communications recently regarding the United States and what has your response been from that?

LAWLOR: Well, I think we’ve written over 10 communications to the U.S., we’ve had no response. But in with the last, you know, in the last administration, the ambassador in Geneva was very accessible. And some members of our team were also very accessible and we could, you know, we could raise cases with them.

We weren’t getting any cases from the US at the time, but we could raise cases in other parts of the world where we thought that they would be able to help. Yeah. And they were willing. Okay. You know, at that point. 

HEINEN: Yeah. Now? 

LAWLOR: Now nothing.

HEINEN: Nothing at all? 

LAWLOR: Nothing. And, um, the people in Geneva last year told me, I asked them what were they supposed to do? And they said they’re supposed to just sit there and listen and say nothing. 

HEINEN: Interesting. So would you say that you think the United States is trying to take steps away from the authority of the United Nations? Or, I mean, could you ever see the United States leaving the United Nations? 

LAWLOR: That’s an interesting question. I think for the moment, it is definitely taking steps away. I mean, it has, it hasn’t funded, paid its share of the funds. Which has had a huge impact on the ability of the UN system to do its work. It won’t show up when it’s being examined by other, this UPR, Universal Periodic Review, it said it won’t show up for that.

Um, it isn’t engaging at all with people like me, the UN special procedures, the independent experts. And so all that points to clearly it doesn’t want anything to do with the UN. Although there I see there has been an ambassador appointed to New York. However, that being said, they haven’t withdrawn. 

They’re a member of the security council. I can’t really see them withdrawing because if they withdrew they would have to leave the security council. And the security council is where all the power lies. And they are like you, you’ve seen over the last few years with Gaza, the last couple of years it was the U.S. when everybody, even at one point, China and Russia voted in favor of a ceasefire in Gaza, it was the U.S. who, who vetoed it. 

So I don’t think they’d want to give up that kind of power. I also think that, you know, Trump is in now, uh, he’s doing so much harm to the international human rights system. He’s just ignoring norms and standards. He’s acting like a complete thug, uh worse. 

Um, he will be finished eventually, his term will end, and we just have to hope that somebody who is more enlightened, and cleverer and has some moral fiber gets in. But you know, the world has always been like this. You know, you, you kind of think that if you get so far, then you’ll keep going.

You know, in human rights terms, you get to this point and then maybe you can get to the next point. And so everything keeps going in the same direction, more and more protection of human rights. But it doesn’t happen like that, you know? It goes up and down, up and down, up and down. And it’s not linear.

HEINEN: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Have you experienced an influx of people reaching out to you from the United States? Uh, specifically, I know, well, just in terms of human rights defenders, there were so many attacks on, uh, people who were protesting for Palestine. And so have you experienced an increase of communication from U.S. citizens? 

LAWLOR: Yeah. I mean, since certainly this year and even last year with Columbia. We, we took up, um, the case of the hundred students, we had consent from all of them. I didn’t lead in it because I wasn’t able to determine whether each of those students was a human rights defender.

But the, uh, rapporteur on freedom of expression, we drafted the appeal, but we asked her to lead on it because she has a broader mandate. So we took up that, we’ve taken up and we’ve just done another communication regarding protests, uh, including, uh, another college in Minnesota. And, so we have experienced, um, more allegations coming from the U.S. which never used to happen. 

HEINEN: Yeah. How do you think that, that just had me thinking too of, um, right now for a paper, I’m looking into a lot of the, like ICE treatment of protestors, in, you know, Chicago and around the country. Have you or do you expect to receive kind of more complaints from that area as well? 

LAWLOR: My mandate is only human rights defenders. So I have done a report to the general assembly on defenders of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. And it is one of the priorities for me. So obviously individuals who are caught up in the atrocious behavior, more atrocious behavior by the Trump administration. 

Uh, through ICE and, uh, lifting these people and detaining them and trying to deport them. That’s outside my mandate. But should some of the lawyers or some of the non-governmental organizations that were, uh, trying to help these people and were being targeted for helping them themselves, then I would take them up. 

HEINEN: Yeah. Well, I hope that doesn’t happen. Why should people listening to this podcast care about the work that you do? 

LAWLOR: I think everyone cares about their own rights. I don’t think you ever met anyone in the world that said to you, “Oh, it’s all right if I starve. It’s all right if I’m not educated. It’s all right if I’m poor. It’s all right if my family members are detained. It’s all right if I can’t express my true identity.”

Nobody says that. Everybody expects it for themselves and they’re entitled to under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights because that’s simply what, what the universal declaration is. It’s, it just says all human beings are born free and equal and dignity and, right. They are endowed with reason and conscience and could, should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

It means that all of us have the same rights, regardless of who we are. So, generally, I think we’re so bound up in our own lives and thinking about our own situation and life is, you know, there’s a lot going on in lives and it is often very hard, uh, to think outside of our own life, and our own family and our own friends.

But you know, when you think how easy it would be to be denied these rights if you weren’t vigilant. To be denied your own rights, if you weren’t vigilant, then I think it should open your mind to understanding that, you know, human rights is the basis of everything and you should be, you should make the connection, I suppose, between your own human rights and the human rights of other people. 

HEINEN: Yeah, very well put. I have a couple ending questions. You said that your term will be up in April of, I’m assuming, 2026. 

LAWLOR: Mm-hmm. 

HEINEN: And so what are you planning to do after your term is up? 

LAWLOR: God, everyone ask me this! I’m 73. 

HEINEN: Hey, it could just be relax. It could just be relax. 

LAWLOR: Nah, I don’t know actually. I know I’m just going to rest. Uh, for at least a month and read books and look at Netflix and stuff like that. And then I’ll volunteer somewhere again. Um, I have had a couple of offers. I just don’t know whether I’ll do anything more or not, or whether I will or not, or, I’ll see how I feel a month after I stop.

HEINEN: Yeah. Well, I hope you get some very long, well deserved rest. I guess you just mentioned books, so I’m glad you said that. I was gonna ask you if you have any book recommendations for people wanting to learn more about human rights advocacy and like what you do or just book recommendations in general that you have enjoyed recently? 

LAWLOR: Well, I, I’d like people to read some of the reports that I’ve written for both the general assembly and the. And they don’t have to read everything, but one I would really recommend for young people is the report we did in 2023 on um, successes of human rights defenders because basically it’s stories about people and how they have improved the lives and the rights of others.

And it was a very joyful report for me. It doesn’t, you know, mean that they haven’t suffered in the same way, but it is just joyful to see. And the other one that I think would be important for young people in university, or important, I can’t say what’s important or not, but I did a report on young people and children who are human rights defenders for the Human Rights Council.

You know, in that you will find, uh, so many cases of young people all over the world, even children who have got involved in, in human rights work. And, uh, you know, it’s, yeah, that’s what I’d say. 

HEINEN: Nice. Well, good recommendations. I’ll link those in the podcast so that people can read them. But do you have anything else you wanna add in? 

LAWLOR: No, not really. 

HEINEN: Perfect. 

LAWLOR: Thank you. 

HEINEN: Yeah, thank you. It’s been a pleasure.

That concludes today’s special episode of In The Know. Thank you again to Mary Lawlor for taking the time to speak with me, it was such an honor. 

This episode was written and produced by Ceci Heinen. If you have any questions, comments or concerns please feel free to email us at [email protected]. Thank you again for tuning in. 

My name is Ceci Heinen, and this has been In The Know.