We are living in a context where protest is criminalized; popular action and social organization are persecuted all over Europe, as well. This context is accompanied by securitization policies and rise of the far-right. As a result, a need has been risen to coordinate and share strategies to defense, to protect and to advocate the right to protest.
The right to protest is not a simple right. Even though it doesn’t exist as such in the main treaties, it combines or includes fundamental rights sharing the same goal: plurality in political participation, defense of rights and conquest of new liberties.
The scope of protest intertwines different rights to such level that its complicated to distinguish one from another. We are talking about the right to peaceful assembly, the right to freedom of expression, the right to freedom of association and the right to information. And we add, the right to psychophysical integrity.
For us, one way of defending the right to protest is to address the violations of rights that happen in its context. In this sense, Novact and Centre Iridia have initiated a European defense, advocacy and capacity building project under the name RIGHT2PROTEST, along with other European organizations.
The RIGHT2PROTEST is a project that is born as a result of the observation of the context of recession regarding the protection of the right to protest in several European countries. The project aims to map the situation of the mentioned right in five countries (Spain, Hungary, France, Poland and Germany), as well as to offer a practical guide of mechanisms that can be used in case that this right were to be violated.
The project looks forward to strengthening the coordination between organisations in the participating countries, and it is as well aimed at political advocacy both at a local and at a European level in order to strengthen the protection of the right to protest and of human rights defenders in contexts of protest.