The Commissioner's Human Rights Comment

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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