Promoting Human Rights

Our work includes cooperation with diaspora communities and participation in delegations invited by organizations in non-Western nations. Acting on behalf of the Amhara and Sudanese exiles living in the United States, for example, we helped formulate letters to the UN and the Sudanese government detailing the genocidal abuses undertaken against the Amhara people and providing Western views of the crisis in Sudan; in both cases we sought to articulate policy options and put forward a report on conditions in the Amhara homeland.

In 2022, Dr. Stephen Bronner, Director of ICDD, participated in a delegation that had been invited to Guinea to discuss human rights abuses, educational reform, and suggestions how to deal with both. A “Report on the Status of Guinea” was written that was then distributed to national officials. Following our visit, dissident community groups asked us to participate in the “Commission nationale des Droits de l’Homme”, Guinée Conakry,” which had the aim of strengthening human rights in the country.

Our organization also forged ties with the Roma community, spread across the West and even met with two of its “kings.” We had been asked to foster connections between disparate parts of the Roma community and, for the benefit of Western politicians, draft a “Declaration of the Needs and Rights of the Roma People.”

In 2021, Dr. Stephen Bronner delivered a speech to the Special Political and Decolonization Committee (Fourth Committee -2021) of the United Nations concerning Western Sahara’s demands for independence from Morocco.

Of particular interest, however, was our organization’s participation in campaigns exposing and publicizing the human rights abuses perpetrated, mostly by the Houthis, which are still plaguing Yemen. This included speeches at the United Nations: Geneva and leadership in the “Yemen Can’t Wait!” campaign for the liberation of jailed Yemeni women as well as mediating meetings between a Yemen delegation and the Israeli Permanent Representative to the UN in Geneva and other NGOs such as CAP Freedom of Conscience. We also produced a popular brochure analyzing the problems there.

Our representatives also participated in various international meetings dealing with human rights, sponsored by the Foreign Ministry of Bahrain at the Oslo Peace Center and the government of Qatar as well as in an International Expert Forum on Tolerance and Xenophobia that took place in Athens in 2018. Noteworthy is also our participation in a shadow report for the UAE at the United Nations: Geneva in 2023.

In 2022, the ICDD actively lobbied the UNHRC to launch an international investigation into the 1988 mass extrajudicial executions and enforced disappearances of political prisoners in Iran. On behalf of the ICDD, Director Dr. Stephen Bronner signed a letter calling on the UN Human Rights Council to urgently challenge the impunity enjoyed by Iranian officials by mandating an international investigation into the 1988 mass executions and enforced disappearances of thousands of political prisoners which constitute ongoing crimes against humanity. Also in December 2023, ICDD participated in the campaign for the release of political prisoners in Iran and joined the appeal to Dr. Mai Sato, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, to publicly condemn these death sentences and demand their immediate repeal and protection of these political prisoners.

ICDD has been actively involved in the lobbying campaign to push for the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act in the United States Congress, and in December 2023 also joined a letter addressed to members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee urging them to bring the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act to committee consideration as soon as possible, so the United States Senate can join the House of Representatives in sending a clear message to not only China, but the rest of the world that the United States is combating and not complicit in the heinous practice of forced organ harvesting.

During the coronavirus pandemic, ICDD experts actively studied the impact of the quarantine regime on the far-right part of society in different countries, including manifestations of extremism. Thus, in June 2020, we held an online symposium with the participation of leading experts on this issue.

In November 2020, the ICDD delegation led by Director Dr. Stephen Bronner took an active part in the Kyiv School of Diplomatic Arts, organized by the Black Sea Trust of the German Marshall Fund (USA) and the Robert Bosch Stiftung (Germany). It was a great and informative colloquium, bringing together a group of distinguished scholars and diplomats with a diverse international audience.

In addition, the ICDD regularly participates in the OSCE Human Dimension Implementation Meeting in Warsaw, as well as in the UNHRC sessions in Geneva, where it presents its reports on xenophobia, radicalism and minority rights in the OSCE area, which are also available upon request. In particular, in October 2024, ICDD Director Dr. Stephen Bronner and ICDD Deputy Director Dr. Valery Engel participated in the 57th session of the UNHRC and held a site event, where they presented the results of their research on radicalism in the United States and Europe.

ICDD also take part in the Holocaust investigations. For example, on May 8, 2024, Museum of Human Rights, Freedom and Tolerance and the International Council for Diplomacy and Dialogue (ICDD) conducted an online symposium entitled De-Judaization of the Term “Holocaust”. The symposium featured a discussion by the distinguished Holocaust scholars, who shared their perspectives on this very timely topic.

Research in the field of extremism is also one of the areas of activity of the ICDD. With the participation of the organization, more than 5 monographs and more than 50 articles devoted to this topic have been published. At the same time, ICDD is focused on the issue of defining extremism. If we take as a starting point that extremism is a phenomenon aimed at breaking the state system and the values ​​on which it is based, then we will quickly conclude that different countries with different values ​​qualify extremist bodies differently. In this regard, we are interested in the extent to which support for socio-political movements and organizations abroad, whose values ​​the country shares, can lead to international tension and conflicts due to the fact that in another country/countries these movements are considered extremist. In addition, the subject of interest of the ICDD is the question of how, in the context of the fight against extremism, to prevent absolute priority of security issues over human rights, especially the freedom of speech.