Last week, the United Nations Human Rights Office issued its first ever guidance paper on “transnational repression,” aimed at increasing awareness and understanding of this expanding global issue.
Transnational repression occurs when governments reach across their borders to stifle criticism and dissent. It can take the form of online harassment, surveillance, enforced disappearances, targeting of relatives, and physical attacks, including killings. Last year, Human Rights Watch documented how this phenomenon is often downplayed or ignored.
The UN paper notes that victims of transnational repression often face barriers accessing protection and remedies. Authorities in some host countries fail to ensure adequate protective measures, but others have actively facilitated foreign governments’ repression of people seeking refuge.
The UN high commissioner for human rights, UN human rights experts, and member states have increasingly been raising the alarm over this practice.
In 2024, following a landmark report by the United Nations special rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression on transnational repression of journalists, dozens of countries from all regions issued a statement condemning transnational repression, committing to supporting those targeted, and holding perpetrators to account.
In his global update earlier this year, the UN high commissioner for human rights noted the rising number of “egregious examples” of transnational repression around the world and called for all states to adopt a “zero-tolerance policy” towards the practice.
The new UN guidance reminds states of their responsibility to respect and protect rights and refrain from committing, enabling, or condoning acts of transnational repression. It offers concrete recommendations to governments for raising awareness and addressing the protection and accountability gap, including establishing mechanisms for remedies and reparations for victims and issuing a moratorium on exporting surveillance “spyware” tools.
Governments should also work together to ensure a coordinated international response to transnational repression that offers robust protection to those at risk.
At the current session of the UN Human Rights Council, states will have opportunities to reference transnational repression in a number of relevant resolutions under negotiation: notably on the protection of journalists and of civil society space. This would help acknowledge the concerns expressed by the UN Human Rights Office and independent rights experts, and build awareness and focus attention on coordinated prevention and remedy.
It is time for a concerted international effort to better understand and address the serious rights impacts of transnational repression and to ensure protection and justice for those targeted.