4 March 2009 Report submitted by the Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights Defenders, Margaret Sekaggy (A/HRC/10/12/Add.1)

Report submitted by the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, Margaret Sekaggy

Introduction

1. The present document is submitted by the then Special Representative of the Secretary General on the situation of human rights defenders, Ms Hina Jilani, and the Special Rapporteur on the situation on human rights defenders, Ms Margaret Sekaggya, to the Human Rights Council, pursuant to resolutions 5/1 and 7/8 of the Human rights Council. The Special Rapporteur took up her functions on 1 May 2008. The document provides summaries of the communications on specific cases addressed by the then Special Representative and the Special Rapporteur to Governments, as well as summaries of the replies by Governments received and their observations thereon.

2. The cases raised by the then Special Representative and the Special Rapporteur in this addendum include communications sent from 11 December 2007 to 10 December 2008. The addendum contains summaries of responses received from Governments until 10 February 2009. Although received before 10 February 2009, few replies are not included in the present report because translation is awaited. Most of the responses by Governments refer to cases raised by the then Special Representative and the Special Rapporteur during the period December 2007 to December 2008; however, some of the responses are to cases addressed by them in earlier reporting periods. While the summaries of these responses are included in this report, the summaries of the cases to which they refer will be found in the then Special Representative’s reports from preceding years (see A/HRC/7/28/Add.1, A/HRC/4/37/Add.1, and E/CN.4/2006/95/Add.1, covering the previous three years).

3. For ease of reference, cases have been grouped by country, with countries listed alphabetically according to their names in English.