UN Reprisals Report Flags Transnational Repression in 32 States

The UN Human Rights Council spent two days this week debating a blunt question: what happens to the activists who tell the United Nations about abuse. On 23 and 24 September, delegates took up the Secretary-General's 2026 report on reprisals against people and groups that cooperate with the UN, a document that names 32 states for retaliating against rights defenders, witnesses, and journalists. The report also points to a newer pattern the Council kept returning to: transnational repression, where governments chase critics across borders after they flee.

Transnational repression means a government tries to silence, intimidate, or punish a person based abroad because of their work or their perceived dissent. In the context of the report, the target is usually someone who engaged with UN mechanisms and then left the country. According to the International Service for Human Rights (ISHR), which tracked the debate, the report says at least 43 individuals and four organisations were hit by such tactics in 15 of the 32 states named. Those tactics range from surveillance and harassment to arbitrary detention, travel bans, misuse of INTERPOL notices, and intimidation of family members left behind.

The country list carries an awkward detail for the Council itself. Eight of the states named are current members of the body doing the debating: Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, France, China, India, Pakistan, and Viet Nam. Germany, which raised several individual cases during the debate, is seeking election to the Council in October, while Burundi is running for reelection. The report also notes that it left out verified claims involving four additional countries because naming them could endanger the victims, a line that drew attention to how much of this intimidation never gets attributed at all.

Activists who fled are still being watched

Madeleine Sinclair, who directs ISHR's New York office and has worked on reprisals for years, told the Council that defenders on the ground are often the people best placed to tell the UN what is happening, and that none of them should face retaliation for it. ISHR's #EndReprisals campaign this year focused on six people who had to leave their countries and remain at risk: exiled Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Anna Kwok, four Burundian lawyers (Armel Niyongere, Dieudonne Bashirahishize, Vital Nshimirimana, and Lambert Nigarura), and exiled Egyptian journalist Basma Mostafa.

Kwok, who is cited in the Secretary-General's report, addressed the Council during the debate. She said that living as a rights defender in exile means knowing you are being watched and threatened every day, and she urged states to back victims of transnational repression and to keep governments from using it. Her statement put a personal frame on a report built from dozens of such cases, and several delegations picked up the names she and ISHR had raised.

Ten states used their floor time to press specific cases. Speaking for Canada and New Zealand, Australia called for protection of Nicaraguan rights defenders in exile and the release of pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong and of Russian Indigenous rights activist Daria Egereva. Belgium, speaking for the Benelux countries, raised Hong Kong activist Chow Hang-Tung, Vietnamese journalist Pham Doan Trang, Cuban political prisoner Roberto Perez Fonseca, and Russian activist Alexey Gorinov. Germany named Egereva again, along with fellow Russian Indigenous rights activist Natalia Leongardt and Chow Hang-Tung. Denmark raised the case of imprisoned Bahraini activist Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja, Liechtenstein named Russian lawyer Violetta Fitzner and the Belarus Human Rights Lawyers association, and the United Kingdom raised Carmen Lau, Fitzner, and the four Burundian lawyers.

UN experts push for stronger laws

A day before the debate closed, more than 130 UN Special Procedures mandate holders and members of treaty bodies signed an unusual joint statement describing transnational repression as a growing challenge to human rights. The statement asks states to tighten national laws to punish and prevent these acts, and asks for stronger protection for the activists and groups targeted by cross-border campaigns. ISHR described the statement as unprecedented in scale.

The push matters because transnational repression exploits gaps between legal systems. A travel ban works even if the activist's new home does not enforce it. A red notice can strand someone in a third country's airport. Pressure on relatives works without any law at all. The experts' statement argues that only coordinated action, backed by real penalties, will raise the cost of reaching across a border to silence someone.

ISHR closed the debate by urging states to keep raising individual cases in public, to guarantee safe and unhindered access to the United Nations for the people who need it most, and to coordinate deterrence against transnational repression. The report will return to the Council's agenda next year. Whether the list of 32 shrinks or grows will be one measure of whether this week's statements changed anything.

Full coverage of the debate is available in ISHR's report from Geneva. For more on this beat, see the site's Human Rights section.