Policy Recommendations

Political imprisonment and tactics to restrict liberty and civic participation (also known as tactics to impose “civil death”) are key tools for limiting dissent, and accompany wider democratic erosion. In order to counter authoritarianism, support advocates of democratic change, and prevent future waves of repression, democratic governments, public and private donors, and civil society organizations should monitor for political imprisonment and civil death tactics, and take action when they are present.

Securing the release of political prisoners

When calling for the release of political prisoners, emphasize that releases should be unconditional. All charges should be dropped and expunged from the prisoner’s record. There should be no bail conditions, travel restrictions, asset freezes, or other measures that restrict their ability to work and live.

Democratic governments should:

• Tailor advocacy strategies to the unique needs and circumstances of each case. The individual’s well-being is paramount, and the wishes of their family members and legal representation must also be carefully considered. Governments should weigh the pros and cons of advocacy to ascertain if state action could cause more harm than good in efforts to secure an individual’s release. With these caveats, utilizing a “carrot-and-stick” approach with perpetrator governments that includes both incentives and penalties has frequently been effective. Some political contexts, such as upcoming elections, potential amnesty days, and other opportunities can be maximized to push for prisoner releases.
• Partner with trusted civil society actors to identify political prisoners and advocate for their release. The sheer number of imprisoned individuals necessitates cooperation with trusted civil society actors. Governments and nongovernmental organizations should partner with groups working to identify and document cases of unjustly detained individuals, as well as groups that have the capacity to help advocate for prisoner releases. Trusted civil society partners may be based inside perpetrator countries, or externally but with close connections on the inside.
• Coordinate agencies’ efforts among themselves and with democratic counterparts abroad. Joint efforts to release prisoners are more effective than individual ones. Advocacy efforts should include coordinated efforts among government agencies and with likeminded foreign governments. Governments can strengthen such coordination by establishing a dedicated office or team within the foreign affairs ministry specifically dedicated to political prisoner and hostage affairs. Appointing dedicated staff to work on the issue will streamline existing efforts to free political prisoners and facilitate knowledge sharing and coordination with likeminded governments. Legislatures also have an important role to play in securing the release of political prisoners, including by issuing statements, introducing relevant resolutions and bills, and conditioning foreign assistance. Coordinated efforts between executive and legislative branches can have a powerful impact on political prisoner cases by presenting a clear and unified message from government. Likeminded governments and other actors should also synchronize messaging and make a common case when speaking up for political prisoners.
• Meet regularly with family members of political prisoners, advocacy groups, media outlets, and journalists, in public and in private. Effective efforts to secure the release of political prisoners take place both in public and in private. In private, governments should meet with families to show support, share updates on their loved one’s case, and gather information relevant to advancing their release. Private meetings with advocacy groups and others are also important for information gathering and message coordination. Public appearances by government officials on behalf of the imprisoned individual, when appropriate and condoned by the prisoner or family, demonstrate support for the prisoner and signal to perpetrating governments that they should expect a sustained campaign to free them. Many political prisoners and their families fear they will be forgotten. Democratic governments and those working for the release of prisoners should, with family approval, keep a public spotlight on those unjustly detained to increase awareness and pressure perpetrator regimes for their release. Stakeholders can highlight individual cases by publicizing an individual’s activism, the circumstances of their detention, or their treatment in prison. Executive and legislative officials and staff should share press releases, statements, and social media posts about individual cases. Murals, letter-writing campaigns, and music are also effective and creative ways to generate public awareness. Efforts to secure the release of political prisoners should go beyond the most high-profile imprisonments and include advocacy on behalf of lesser-known individuals, as giving political prisoners a higher profile through advocacy work can improve their treatment in prison and prompt governments to expedite cases.
• Include political prisoner advocacy among the key duties of embassy personnel. Embassy personnel working in countries with political prisoners should, pending approval from the imprisoned individual’s legal advisers or family members, attend and monitor trials and hearings of individuals facing politically motivated charges and of those already in detention or prison. They should also conduct visits to detention facilities to assess political prisoners’ health, inspect conditions, and determine needs.
• Highlight the staggering rate of unjust imprisonment and deplorable prison conditions at international forums, including by inviting formerly detained individuals and relatives of those unjustly detained, and placing political prisoner issues on official agendas. This also includes calling out when a perpetrator country’s human rights body, ombudsman, or equivalent entity makes misleading statements about prison conditions or other relevant topics. Democratic governments should call for an end to prison abuses, including torture, and draw attention to cases where family and lawyer visits to prisoners are denied. There are many accounts of prisoners being denied access to professional medical care, including by using security as a pretext, and governments should call out these instances and pressure perpetrator governments to allow access.
• Support initiatives to “adopt a political prisoner.” Examples of existing initiatives that could be emulated include the Defending Freedoms Project run by the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission in the US House of Representatives, in partnership with the Senate Human Rights Caucus and civil society organizations including Freedom House; and the Belarusian “Prisoner Godparenthood” program by Libereco, an independent German-Swiss human rights organization. Both programs help legislators to choose the case of an individual political prisoner and advocate for their release in public and private settings, including through op-eds and floor speeches, and by writing to the prisoner or their family. Such programs are not exclusive to government participation—celebrities and influencers are also effective in amplifying campaigns to free political prisoners.
• Work with civil society groups to create a safe platform to collect information on prisoner rights violations. This information can be used to seek accountability for perpetrators during or after the period during which a political prisoner is incarcerated.

Democratic governments and donors should:

• Provide financial resources to support political prisoners, their families, and their lawyers, including adequate support after release. Donors should provide financial assistance to cover the legal expenses incurred by detained human rights defenders and their families, including attorney fees, defense expert fees, and costs related to legal disputes. Donors can also provide support by funding local civil society organizations that offer legal services and are often underresourced. Donors should also be prepared to provide funds to support appeals to higher courts following an unjust sentencing, as well as legal inquiries as to detention conditions and official complaints. In some cases, political prisoners are transferred deliberately to locations far from their communities; in such cases, donors should consider offering additional funding for travel and accommodation costs for lawyers to visit relocated clients.

Donors can support families of political prisoners by providing them with funds to send humanitarian packages to theirimprisoned relatives, including basic staples that are not available in prison, as well as by covering transportation costs to visit detainees and attend court proceedings. Additional support for the spouses of political prisoners would also be beneficial, as many are forced to assume the role of primary breadwinner while their loved one is behind bars.

Former prisoners often face difficulty securing work, housing, and education due to both legal barriers and social stigmatization. They may also experience difficulty accessing services—including medical care and psychosocial support, which may be necessary as a result of extended time in harsh and overcrowded prison conditions—because of stigma and discrimination associated with imprisonment. Furthermore, they can face smear campaigns by state and nonstate actors, intimidation from landlords and potential employers, surveillance, and the threat of rearrest, as well as imprisonment of their family members in an effort to silence them post-release. Support programs should also include relocation aid depending on the wishes of the former political prisoner, or conditions the perpetrator government has placed upon their release.

• Support efforts to improve prison conditions and access to health care. Increase support to develop strategic services and advocacy to improve conditions of imprisonment in line with human rights conventions and treaties. Conduct or fund policy research to document the health and human rights situations of prisoners and former prisoners, during and after release, and the services and policies that impact these health and rights related conditions. Build capacity for collaboration and sustained advocacy and litigation at national and international levels for prisoners’ health and rights. Connect former prisoners with first-hand knowledge of health care conditions in prison with those working on prison conditions in the perpetrating country, including human rights defenders, civil society organizations, and policymakers at national, regional, and international levels.

Responding to political imprisonment and civil death

For every political prisoner behind bars, many more government opponents and critics face restrictions that severely impact their ability to work and to live a normal life, amounting to what experts have termed “civil death.” Tactics of civil death include control over travel, physical monitoring, blacklisting, and asset seizures, and often occur in combination.

Governments should recognize that tactics to limit liberty go beyond outright imprisonment and take action to support rights defenders, including by helping those at serious risk to relocate, to continue their work abroad, and to return home if it becomes safe to do so. Ensuring that human rights defenders who have experienced imprisonment or civil death can reintegrate into society is critical to strengthening democracy and the protection of fundamental rights.

• Democratic governments should support the relocation of human rights defenders, activists, and journalists at serious risk of political imprisonment or civil death. Relocation support may be needed for the short, medium, or long term, and includes individuals who may be subject to travel bans or have had their passports confiscated. Governments should provide visas for those needing short- or medium-term relocation, and embassies in perpetrator countries should work to resolve politicized restrictions on travel. For those who need to relocate in the long term, governments should ensure that immigration procedures for asylum seekers and refugees are clear, transparent, and swift. Governments should facilitate family reunification if a human rights defender’s family members are not able to initially accompany them. Democratic governments should work to identify and provide support to other democracies that are willing to accept and support exiled dissidents but may not have the resources to do so without additional support. However, democracies should avoid sending refugees and exiles to countries with nondemocratic governments, as this could place them at greater risk. Relocation efforts should take into account that even in democratic countries, individuals may still be at risk of transnational repression—when governments reach beyond their borders to silence critics and opponents.
• Democratic governments and donors should fund periodic assessments of the risk at home for exiled human rights defenders, ideally in collaboration with local contacts and civil society organizations in the home country. Assessments should include information on conditions for the human rights defender upon their return, factoring in problems like difficulty finding work and the potential for social stigmatization, and include recommendations for how governments and donors can support them. In cases where permanent relocation is necessary, democratic governments should support efforts that help exiled human rights defenders continue contributing to human rights work taking place in their home country.
  • In the United States, policymakers should establish a limited visa category to provide precleared at-risk human rights defenders and democracy activists with a multiple-entry, multiyear nonimmigrant visa. This would allow those facing unjust imprisonment or physical threats due to the nature of their work to continue their work from the safety of the United States, before they are able to safely return home. Vulnerable human rights defenders could be nominated by US embassy personnel in close consultation with civil society partners and likeminded democratic governments.
  • In the European Union (EU)—as a coalition of 50 international civil society organizations led by ProtectDefenders.eu has advocated for—a special, accelerated visa process for human rights defenders guaranteeing predictability, consistency, and protection for those who are most at-risk should be developed. This should be a multiple-entry, long-term visa, and application procedures for it should be user-friendly and available in multiple relevant languages. Additionally, financial requirements should be alleviated, visa application processing fees should be waived for at-risk human rights defenders, and the visa processing time should be shorter to allow for urgent procedures. Embassies of EU countries should receive and process visa applications, and a special office for human rights–defender visa processes should be created. Local and international civil society organizations identified as partners should be able to refer cases to the office and confirm individuals’ status as a rights defender, helping to speed up the visa processing. National human rights institutions and civil society groups should be consulted and involved in implementing this new EU visa application process.
• Democratic governments and donors should help targets of political imprisonment and civil death protect their digital security. No matter their location, at-risk human rights defenders and democracy advocates are at risk of repression online, and benefit from the assistance of groups that offer strategic digital security training. Democratic governments and donors should support groups that help rights defenders encrypt emails; password protect servers; upgrade equipment; detect malware; lock phones; and protect themselves on social media.
• Private-sector actors should consult with democratic governments and civil society to ensure that de-risking measures do not adversely impact human rights defenders. Businesses routinely take steps to limit their exposure to legal, financial, and reputational risk, and to comply with sanctions and regulations related to financial crimes, corruption, and terrorist activity. These measures have sometimes negatively impacted human rights defenders: for example, rights advocates have had their bank accounts closed, seen traffic redirected from their websites, and have been denied access to crowdfunding platforms. When making decisions about how to manage risk exposure, financial institutions and corporations should meet with human rights defenders and civil society organizations so they are aware of how their business practices and de-risking efforts impact this work, and they should take steps to ensure that de-risking measures do not have unintended consequences for rights activists and civilians.
• Regional institutions should continue to spotlight and condemn violations of human rights, including the use of political imprisonment or post-prison restrictions on liberty, because of their unique ability to influence the target country, sometimes with more impact than from specific democratic governments outside the region.

Addressing systemic conditions that enable political imprisonment and civil death

Political imprisonment and civil death tactics occur in both hardened authoritarian contexts and in countries experiencing democratic erosion. The following recommendations are ways stakeholders can address systemic conditions that enable political imprisonment and civil death tactics, and work to reverse democratic backsliding.

• Democratic governments and international rights organizations should support local civil society groups and citizen-led social movements. Efforts should include assistance and training on issues like coalition and constituency building, advocacy, organizational development, and physical and digital security. Democratic governments and international groups can show solidarity with local groups and movements by meeting with their representatives when they travel abroad, and accommodating logistical challenges like translation and interpretation.
• Organize multilateral efforts to address democratic backsliding. Efforts to counter authoritarianism and empower rights defenders are most effective when they are coordinated. Democracies should devise comprehensive strategies for deploying targeted sanctions to ensure accountability for international human rights abuses and acts of corruption. When possible, democracies should coordinate their efforts and jointly impose sanctions on perpetrators for maximum impact, as the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the EU have done in recent cases. Democratic nations that do not yet have laws allowing for targeted sanctions for human rights abuses and acts of corruption should enact them, and those with laws on the books should ensure that they are fully resourced and enforced. Democratic governments should continue to press for respect for human rights no matter how repressive the system. Doing so can increase the costs of rights violations, including political imprisonment, and also prevent such acts from happening in the first place.
• Democratic governments should use the potential elimination or restriction of nonhumanitarian aid to a country as a tool to combat repression, including political imprisonment and tactics of civil death. Even when the amount of foreign assistance is relatively small, this tactic bolsters rights defenders inside the country by showing that external actors take notice of repression. Assistance should come with conditions tied to respect for human rights and democracy.
• International financial institutions should push back against authoritarian laws or practices that curb their ability to operate in-country. These institutions, like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, as well as regional banks like the Inter-American Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, and the African Development Bank, should also ensure that assistance to countries is conditioned on respect for democracy and human rights.
• Democratic countries with legislation on terrorism, cybercrime, and disinformation should be proactive in distinguishing their laws from authoritarian regimes that claim they are adopting similar legislation in their countries, where there is evidence that those laws have been used to target journalists, human rights defenders, and other activists.
• International law on arbitrary detention, and international and regional justice mechanisms should be used to hold perpetrators accountable. While the use of these mechanisms by UN bodies and other groups may not always have immediate impact on the release of a specific prisoner, they can have broader long-term impact by making government officials more reluctant to jail human rights defenders because they may not want to invite scrutiny.
• Democratic governments should scrutinize autocratic governments’ claims that human rights defenders have engaged in criminal activity. Criminal charges against rights defenders lodged in countries rated Partly Free or Not Free by Freedom in the World should be afforded extra scrutiny. Allegations of drunk driving, money laundering, drug trafficking, and other crimes can be used to detain government opponents while reducing the likelihood of allegations that the targeted individual is a political prisoner. When democratic governments have the capacity to conduct their own assessment, or work with civil society groups that can provide independent analysis of potentially bogus charges, they should expose such charges as aiming to legitimize a crackdown on democratic activism.
• Democratic governments should scrutinize conditions for prisoners’ release. When political prisoners are released, including through amnesty or pardons, they often continue to face illegitimate restrictions including daily reporting to the authorities or prohibition from traveling to certain locations or abroad. In such situations, governments should continue to pressure the regimes responsible for these post-release measures until all restrictions are lifted.
• Democratic governments should expand the focus on political prisoners beyond the number of individuals wrongly detained. Prisoner “censuses” are useful tools, but they are not comprehensive. For example, they may not reveal the “revolving door” phenomenon, in which individual prisoners are held for shorter periods of time but face rearrest, or some individuals are released while others are detained. Governments should engage with local civil society groups and diaspora groups to gain a more comprehensive picture of the scope and methods of political imprisonment in a country when crafting strategies to combat political imprisonment.
• Freedom House offers further recommendations for addressing democratic decline in our annual Freedom in the World report.

Pushing back against attacks on judicial independence

In many undemocratic contexts, declining judicial independence allows the regime to harness the courts as part of its oppressive infrastructure, facilitating politically motivated prosecutions, detentions, and sentencing. Democratic governments, civil society organizations, and donors should push back against attacks on the rule of law and governments’ use of the judiciary to enact repression, as well as against the persecution of independent judges.

• Seek to strengthen judicial independence in countries receiving foreign assistance by encouraging judicial review and oversight, increased transparency of judicial decisions, and adherence to judicial codes of ethics. Similarly, donors should encourage implementation of procedural codes that reflect human rights standards and criminal justice reforms.
• Publicly and privately denounce instances where judges are targeted for refusing to uphold politically motivated charges against human rights or prodemocracy advocates.
• Support judges’ associations in which members of the judiciary are encouraged to take an active role in discussing and advocating for judicial and legal reform, in consultation with civil society.
• Apply targeted sanctions against prosecutors and judges who are responsible for wrongly prosecuting, convicting, and sentencing human rights defenders, journalists, and other activists.