Gina Romero published a Joint Declaration with the IACHR and ACHPR on how securitization and digital surveillance are eroding democratic freedoms.

Today, on the International Day of Democracy, together with the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), the Commissioner Rapporteur for Human Rights Defenders of the IACHR, and the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders, and focal point on reprisals and focal point on the judicial independence in Africa of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR), I published a new Joint Declaration on protecting the freedoms of peaceful assembly and of association from growing securitization and surveillance.

A Global Trend Undermining Democracy

The Declaration documents a pattern repeating across regions: governments invoking national security to justify vague counter-terrorism laws, mass digital surveillance, and the deployment of militarized units against peaceful protesters. These practices don’t strengthen public safety, they do the opposite, building a surveillance ecosystem that deters people from organizing, protesting, or defending human rights.

Principles to Protect Civic Space

The Declaration sets out fifteen general principles and recommendations addressed to States, intergovernmental bodies, and businesses. Among the central points:

• National security can only be invoked to protect the existence of the nation, its territorial integrity, or its political independence, never as a pretext for vague or disproportionate restrictions.
• Mass digital surveillance is, by definition, incompatible with the principle of proportionality.
• The army and military-type units must not be deployed to police assemblies.
• Companies that produce or trade surveillance technologies and weapons must apply human rights due diligence across the full life cycle of their products.

Why This Matters on the International Day of Democracy

Democracy and security are not in competition, they reinforce each other. Protecting freedom of peaceful assembly and of association means protecting civil society’s ability to participate, dissent, and demand accountability, the elements that sustain any democratic system.

Download the full Joint Declaration Here.