Defenders and NGOs in the field work under severe conditions. They demand immediate implementation. They have specific concerns for humanitarian law; macroeconomic issues (economic system as source of violations); impunity; violence against women; and for their protection. Indeed, these issues have been integrated in all gva4HR Courses, but they have also to be put on the UN agenda with concrete proposals and recommendations. Since 2009, gva4HR convenes Experts Seminars on these priorities.
So far, gva4HR Experts Seminars covered: International Humanitarian Law (September 2010 and June 2011); Transitional Justice (September 2011); International Criminal Law (May 2014); Enforced Disappearances (November 2012, November 2013, September 2014, December 2016, March 2017, November 2018, February 2019, November 2021); Indigenous Peoples’ Rights (March 2014, July 2016, July 2017, July 2018, July 2019, July 2021); Religious Freedom (Dec. 2012, June 2015); Minorities (November 2011); Obstetric Fistula (September 2020); Caste Discrimination (2009); Business and Human Rights (May and December 2013, December 2014, June 2015); the Trends in the HR-Council (March 2011); the Anniversary of the World Conference (June 2013, June 2018); the future of UN human rights mechanisms and procedures (August and December 2019).
Aim of the Expert Seminars is to introduce proposals in the Geneva conversation. We believe that victims, witnesses and defenders have the best expertise to explain the patterns of human rights abuses they are victims of. Therefore, at each of these Seminars gva4HR gives the floor to defenders NGOs from the regions. In 2021, gva4HR realized two Experts Seminars:
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- gva4HR 6th Expert Seminar on Indigenous peoples’ Rights (hybrid, 15 July), on the right of indigenous peoples to self-determination; co-sponsored by the delegations of Guatemala, Finland, Mexico and Norway (GSS-37);
gva4HR 7th Expert Seminar on Enforced Disappearances (hybrid, 24 November), with a particular focus on disappearances in the context of migration, sponsored by the delegations of Argentina, Chile, France and the Netherlands (GSS-38).