The Commissioner's Human Rights Comments
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Human Rights Comment

Protecting the human rights of sex workers

15/02/2024 Strasbourg

The lived realities of sex workers across Europe raise serious human rights concerns. It is crucial to approach this important and complex issue with a full understanding of the human rights consequences of the experience of high levels of violence and inadequate protection from law enforcement...

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Human Rights Comment

Crackdowns on peaceful environmental protests should stop and give way to more social dialogue

02/06/2023 Strasbourg

Environmental pollution, climate change and biodiversity loss are among the most urgent existential threats to humankind and to human rights. In response, many people in Europe and beyond have seen fit to take to the streets and to try new, often disruptive, forms of peaceful protest to demand...

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Human Rights Comment

Nothing to cure: putting an end to so-called “conversion therapies” for LGBTI people

16/02/2023 Strasbourg

There is nothing therapeutic about so-called conversion therapies. These are the words of a transgender (trans) person and activist who spoke with me at a recent gathering for civil society. This simple sentence reveals the insidious nature of interventions which claim that one can, and should,...

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Human Rights Comment

Highly intrusive spyware threatens the essence of human rights

27/01/2023 Strasbourg

Over 18 months have passed since an international coalition of brave investigative journalists released the Pegasus Project. The disclosure of the leak of over 50,000 phone numbers, including those of many human rights defenders, journalists, academics, and opposition leaders, that had been...

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Human Rights Comment

For the rights of the living, for the dignity of the dead – Time to end the plight of missing migrants in Europe

29/09/2022 Strasbourg

Bereavement in their death to feel Whom we have never seen — A Vital Kinsmanship import Our Soul and theirs — between — For Stranger — Strangers do not mourn (Emily Dickinson) A few lines of poetry hang on the entrance of the graveyard of the island of Lampedusa, Italy’s southernmost point,...

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Human Rights Comment

Support Russian and Belarusian civil societies and human rights defenders

31/08/2022 Strasbourg

Russia’s military attack has resulted in immense suffering, deaths and destruction in Ukraine, with disastrous human rights and humanitarian consequences for all the people living there. It has also triggered the cessation of membership of the Russian Federation in the Council of Europe and a...

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Human Rights Comment

Not a target – the need to reinforce the safety of journalists covering conflicts

02/05/2022 Strasbourg

There are many areas around the world, particularly in conflict or post-conflict zones, where it is dangerous, even life-threatening, to practice journalism. The war in Ukraine provides yet another tragic illustration of the vulnerability of journalists in conflict situations. While it is...

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Human Rights Comment

Addressing the invisibility of women and girls with disabilities

21/04/2022 Strasbourg

Often, women with disabilities are invisible and marginalised in society, including among those promoting the rights of persons with disabilities, and those promoting gender equality and the advancement of women. The exclusion of women with disabilities from decision-making spaces has for a long...

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Human Rights Comment

No space for violence against women and girls in the digital world

15/03/2022 Strasbourg

The advancement of technology has enabled us to connect, share important information, speak up and raise awareness on human rights violations. But it has also provided additional fertile grounds for gender-based violence against women and girls to an alarming extent, and with little...

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Human Rights Comment

Pride vs. indignity: political manipulation of homophobia and transphobia in Europe

16/08/2021 Strasbourg

World Pride is being celebrated on our continent this week, but a surge in intolerance towards LGBTI people in Europe is nothing to be proud about. In more and more European countries, politicians and public officials are shamelessly targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex...

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