In September 2025, Manushya Foundation submitted a report to the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, responding to a Call for Input to inform the UN Special Rapporteur’s final report to the 61st session of the Human Rights Council.

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Our submission contributing to the UN Special Rapporteur’s Report titled ‘Raising their voices: Human Rights Defenders respond to the human rights crisis’ sheds light on the severe reprisals faced by Human Rights Defenders (HRDs) in Laos and Thailand, from SLAPP lawsuits and digital surveillance to arbitrary arrests and extreme violence. It denounces the lack of adequate legal frameworks recognising and protecting HRDs, and how both governments weaponise existing restrictive laws and cyber tools to criminalise defenders’ work.

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Drawing on Manushya Foundation’s direct experience supporting HRDs, the report proves how this violence does not know borders, as the two authoritarian governments are increasingly complicit in transnational repression.

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Grounded in our feminist, decolonial, and intersectional values, it further focuses on the gendered impacts of repression faced specifically by Women HRDs (WHRDs) and documents how the 2025 USAID funding cuts forced a drastic scale back of critical feminist safety nets and protection mechanisms, leaving HRDs at heightened risk.

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With this submission, we call on the international community to stand with all the courageous activists and HRDs resisting surveillance, violence, and cross-border persecution, and to demand accountability from the Thai and Lao governments. We further call on international donors to recognise and uphold their shared responsibilities under the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders by ensuring sustained, flexible, long-term funding for HRDs and the organisations that defend them.