Transnational Repression, State Repression, and the United Nations Human Rights System

Most activity relevant to outcomes of UN human rights bodies takes place outside of the meeting chambers. States pressure one another, negotiate, build coalitions, and so on. Non-liberal authoritarian states are no different in this regard, but they do engage in certain tactics that are more specific to their regime characteristics. State repression, sometimes of the transnational variety, aimed at preventing citizens from sharing information or expertise with UN human rights bodies, is one such tactic. In UN vocabulary this is known as "intimidation and reprisals for cooperation with the United Nations in the field of human rights" and since 2010 the UN has been tracking and reporting such instances. The NGO International Service for Human Rights (ISHR) has created a dataset from these reports that records details about 709 events in reports between 2010 and 2020. Using this data, this paper argues that repression aimed at individuals or groups is meant to silence critics of the state in question and therefore manipulate the human rights record of that state as documented by the UN. By punishing individuals who work with the UN the state aims to sever links between the domestic sphere and international visibility and, ultimately, accountability. Punishing individuals who push the limits may deter others who are considering voicing their concerns, while punishing groups who engage may fracture or ultimately destroy the group. The objective is a sanitized version of the state’s human rights performance shorn of dissenting voices. After presenting a descriptive overview using the dataset, the paper focuses on two case studies to assess the effectiveness of this tactic: repression by Venezuelan and Hong Kong authorities of individuals and groups attempting to work with the UN human rights machinery pertaining to their respective polities.