The European Parliament Debates Report on Human Rights Defenders Today

With ICORN among its consultative bodies, the report makes several substantive and operational recommendations. The proposed programme of shelter cities would enable people to live and work in safety from persecution in Europe. The other proposal, prompt delivery of visas and urgency visas for human rights defenders at risk and in emergency situations would effectively enable the EU to remove these people from the risk situations. Another key recommendation of the report is to create human rights focal points into the European Parliament, the European External Action Service and the EU Delegations abroad.

The main purpose of the report is to take a critical look at current EU policies in promoting and supporting human rights defenders in countries outside the EU, and makes proposals on how the EU Human Rights Policy could be made more coherent and effective. In specific, Hautala aims to define an EU strategy based on the new provisions of the Lisbon Treaty.