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SUPPORTING HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS PATRICK EARLE Since 2003 Patrick has been the Executive Director of the Diplomacy Training Program. Within this position Patrick has helped create human rights courses focusing on contemporary issues. Prior to this appointment, Patrick worked with the Human Rights Council on ‘The Right Way to Development – Policy and Practice’. Patrick continues to advocate for human right issues, specifically through his role as a Visting Fellow at UNSW where is able to spread his knowledge and share his experiences with students.
Congratulations to the Human Rights Defender on its 30th Anniversary. It is striking looking back 30 years to the Diplomacy Training Program’s (DTP’s) first contributions to Human Rights Defender – with their focus on human rights in Cambodia and on the difficulty of getting Australian aid funding for training of human rights defenders. As I write this, I am reading of the arrest and detention of environmental human rights defenders working for an NGO called Mother Earth in Cambodia – and working on funding applications to DFAT. While these challenges remain, so much has changed over the last 30 years. DTP was established by Jose Ramos-Horta and Professor Garth Nettheim (founder of AHRC and Human Rights Defender) at a time of great, perhaps naïve, optimism for progressing human rights in the region, with hopes that Australia would play a significant role in such progress. The end of the Cold War promised a new focus on international human rights standards as shared values of humanity and human progress. The success of peoples’ movements against authoritarian regimes in South Korea and the Philippines promised a new age of democracy and respect for human rights in the region. Global movements to end apartheid in South Africa, against
poverty and for women’s rights were demonstrating the power of international solidarity and global civil society. By 1990, with the adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Migrant Workers Convention, there was a comprehensive set of binding international human rights treaties. The human rights challenges lay not in definition, but implementation. The vision of DTP’s founders was in seeing the value in investing in human rights defenders and movements; in making knowledge of human rights and international law accessible and practical to those working on the frontline of struggles for self-determination, democracy, peace, and justice. These individuals and movements are critical in generating the necessary political will to implement human rights and human rights standards. In their hands human rights standards and mechanisms become tools for justice and change. All of this was distilled into DTP’s approach to building the capacity of human rights defenders and their movements. Established as an NGO based in Australia, DTP connected struggles of Australia’s First Nations, Timorese, and other diaspora communities in Australia with the human rights movements in Asia and the Pacific. Respecting the perspectives and experiences of its participants, its programs recognised the value of sharing knowledge, in building practical advocacy skills and networks.
