Martin Jones and Sanna Eriksson co-hosted a UN Human Rights Council side event on temporary relocation in Geneva on 1 March 2017. The co-organisers were the Dutch, Georgian, Costa Rican and Swiss permanent missions to the UN, and the Dutch NGO Justice and Peace. The panellists included the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of HRDs Michel Forst, Mr Kees van Bar the Dutch Human Rights Ambassador, Joe Moses (HRD from Papua New Guinea), Memory Bandera (DefendDefenders), and Alexia Falisse (Justice and Peace).
This was followed on 2 March CAHR with a workshop on temporary relocation to build upon our work with the UN special rapporteur on HRDs and CAHR’s extensive experience in running the Protective Fellowship Scheme for HRDs at risk. The day was spent discussing issues affecting temporary relocation programmes, ranging from questions around access to relocation schemes to issues surrounding return after relocation. Participants in the workshop included relocation providers such as ICORN, Justice and Peace, Pan-African Human Rights Defender Network, Forum-Asia and Frontline Defenders.