The Challenge
To contribute to the future thematic and geographic programming of support and protection actions for Human Rights Defenders, under the Human Rights and Democracy Thematic Programme and the Civil Society Thematic Programme and contribute to improving the knowledge of INTPA services on the progress and effectiveness of the support to HRDs.

Our work and approach
This Ad hoc report presents the key findings of the Result-Oriented Monitoring (ROM) reviews conducted between 2016 and 2022 for a sample of 17 EU funded interventions to support Human Rights Defenders (HRDs) with the objective to provide strategic, operational recommendations to support the design of future sector strategies and programming of INTPA G-01 and EU Delegations (EUDs). The sample includes interventions from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Cambodia, Colombia, Guatemala, Haiti, Iraq, Kenya, Malaysia (Thailand), Nicaragua, the Philippines and Uganda, as well as two Centrally Managed Thematic Interventions (CMTI), namely the EU Human Rights Defenders Mechanism and the Direct Support to Individual Human Rights Defenders (now the Emergency Fund).

Results and Insights
Sixteen key recommendations to the EU focus on facilitating exchanges between legal assistance providers with a special focus on arrest and detention; providing training to IPs on how to use internal mechanisms and courts effectively; ensuring that training/capacity development activities for institutions of the criminal justice chain are embedded into broader reform efforts in order to be effective; tracking the effectiveness of trainings for HRDs by having trainees develop follow-up plans and by providing mentoring/coaching; in case of support for the approval and implementation of national laws/policies in favour of HRDs, consider funding the advocacy process to support approval, as well as the roll-out of approved laws and policies; placing considerations on supporting disability rights defenders, youth, whistle blowers of corruption cases, climate change activists; encouraging capital-based HRDs to reach out to and support their colleagues in rural areas; encouraging Implementing partners to establish a learning culture in their organisations and promote exchange of good practices on protection strategies and advising EUDs to consider using the thematic funding for country based support to back-up protection measures for HRDs requiring medium to long-term support.