The grassroots struggle for human rights and climate justice will continue despite the crackdown against activists by governments and corporations across much of the world, according to Mary Lawlor, the outgoing UN special rapporteur on human rights defenders.

Lawlor, an Irish human rights advocate, leaves the mandate after six years having witnessed  a slew of European governments target Palestinian rights supporters, climate activists and those defending the rights of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers by criminalizing the right to peaceful protest and basic humanitarian work. Europe’s backslide also includes far-right elected leaders in at least 10 countries including Slovakia, Hungary, Italy, Turkey and Bulgaria targeting LGBTQ rights and defenders in an effort to sow division.

“All over Europe we see a pivot to securitization and putting money into weapons and armaments and divestment from human rights work, which they're  entitled  to do given the  volatile geopolitical situation with Putin on one hand, Trump and Israel on the other hand.  But what I didn't expect to find is a crackdown on freedom of association in country after country… in France, the UK, Germany, Greece, Turkey, Hungary, a bit in Ireland, and even Sweden, which really shocked me because it used to be a bastion of human rights and disarmament,” Lawlor told Drilled.

UN special rapporteurs are independent experts who carry out country visits, advocate on individual cases, and report on human rights situations across a range of themes including the climate crisis, food systems, housing, water, torture, and freedom of expression. But the scope and capacity of their work is likely to be limited going forward after the Trump administration slashed funding to the UN.

Lawlor, the former director of Amnesty International's Irish branch and founder of Frontline Defenders, was appointed as special rapporteur after more than four decades working with human rights defenders.

Lawlor’s first major report to the UN General Assembly was in 2020 on Greece, where lawyers, journalists, and search and rescue workers helping refugees and asylum seekers were being charged with crimes such as aiding and abetting people smuggling. “I  was  really  shocked  by  the  criminalization  that  was  occurring. One  journalist  had  charges  brought  against  him  for  giving  a  cup  of  water  to  somebody  at  a  landing  site.”

Lawlor describes the treatment of refugees, migrants  and  asylum  seekers globally as “one  of  the  horrors  of  our  time,” and the dire situation in Greece prompted a global focus on the plight of those defending their rights leading to the Refusing to turn away report.

Grassroots activists and campaigners have historically led the charge in advancing basic human rights in every sphere of life and injustice, but advances have always been slow and non linear, according to Lawlor, 74.

“Obviously, there's  not  a  lot  of  space  currently for  civil  society  activism in some countries, but  it's  always  been  the  way. When I started in  the  70s, you  had  the  military  dictatorships  in  Latin  America, the Soviet Union drugging dissidents with psychiatric medication, and then Idi Amin in Uganda; Bosnia, the Rwanda genocide, Congo. There was a brief period when the  wall  came  down  and  the  Soviet  Union  dismantled where  it  looked  like  the  trajectory  of  human  rights  was  on  the  right incline, but  it's  never  linear… and somehow the world always muddles through.”

The current global crackdown on human rights defenders is happening amid a surge in extreme-right governments and conflicts not seen since the post-World War II era. Even before the current US-Israel illegal wars across the Middle East, 2024/25 marked a grim new record with the highest number of state-based wars in over seven decades including major conflicts in Ukraine, Palestine, Myanmar, Congo, Yemen and Sudan.

This backslide is taking place under democratic and autocratic governments across the global north and south, with states clearly learning from each other, according to Lawlor.

El Salvador, a tiny country in Central America with a democratically elected autocrat, is the latest to pass a nefarious foreign agent law, a repressive legal tool deployed by authoritarian regimes in Russia, India, Georgia, the United States, Nicaragua, and Hungary to silence critical voices and force human rights defenders including journalists to self censor, go into exile or face prison.

Israel meanwhile, has demonstrated utter disregard for all international law and norms,  leading Lawlor to advocate for Palestinian paramedics, doctors and journalists systematically targeted for assassination, as well as Palestinian rights defenders in Israel, the US, and across Europe who have been criminalized.

“In Gaza, medics, ambulance drivers and  journalists were targeted while working in  accordance  with  the  Universal  Declaration  of  Human  Rights, the  right  to  life,  the  right  to  health,  all  of  that  kind  of  stuff,” said Lawlor. Deliberately targeting health workers is a war crime under international humanitarian law, specifically the Geneva Conventions.

Globally, human rights defenders often face the brunt of repression during democratic backslides, and while the climate crisis, artificial intelligence and social media present new and unique challenges, this will not stop them, according to Lawlor.

“You will always have human  rights  defenders, people  who  see  injustice  and  want  to  do  something  about  it.  There  are many  more  good  people  in  the  world  than  bad  people, and more  people  working  in  some  capacity  for  human  rights  now  than  there  have  ever  been  before and that'll  continue.”

Lawlor’s final mission takes her to the Pacific islands which are facing an existential threat from the climate crisis as well as high levels of intrafamilial gender violence. She will be replaced in May by Andrea Bolaños Vargas of Colombia, the first Latin American expert appointed to this role by the UN Human Rights Council

Reflecting on her tenure, Lawlor said: “As special rapporteurs, we can’t solve the  global  geopolitical  situation but we can support the struggles of human rights defenders by using the mandate to bring their voices  and concerns to  the  international  community, giving them visibility, credibility, legitimacy, and solidarity.”

“Human  rights  defenders  are  in  my  blood. They are the people I admire most, and to this  day,  I  still  think  that  they  are  the  ones  who  will  build  civil  and  just  societies  in  their  countries. You  can't  impose this from  outside. There  has  to  be  people  on  the  ground  who  are  continuously  advocating  for human  rights,  social  justice  and  the  rule  of  law,  and exposing  injustices. But it  is  hard  work, and I would love to see human rights  education  in  primary schools because everybody  has  a  part  to  play.”