@faultlinenotes.bsky.social
We live along faultlines: places where rights, power, and principles collide. Some cracks are loud. Others are quiet. All of them shape the world we live in. These are our Notes from the Faultine.
President Isaac Herzog (right) welcomes David Zini (left) to the President's Residence in Jerusalem, on Sunday. Credit: Avi Hayoun (Haaretz)
Politicising security and intelligence services is a faultline for democracy⚡️🇮🇱
In a context of high tension and active conflict, as in Israël, it only further erodes the very principles those institutions are meant to protect and Israël's democracy.
🔗 www.haaretz.com/israel-news/...
The attack on civil society is a major faultline⚡️
🌍 Civil society closures
💸 Aid collapse
🛑 Weaponised laws
👩👩👧👦 Gender & LGBTQI rights attacked
⚔️ Security over rights
An existential threat to democracy, solidarity, human dignity.
@unsrapporteurfoaa.bsky.social
🔗 www.ohchr.org/en/documents...
Heartbreaking 💔
@coe.int can pride itself of all it did to prevent torture and ill treatment and improve detention conditions, in collaboration with civil society, notably @penalreformint.bsky.social and the Swiss APT.
Looks like another faultline ⚡️⤵️
Donald Trump tours the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. ‘If Trump is able to punish lawyers who oppose him and ignore the courts, he will be only steps away from becoming the king he seems to want to be,’ said one law professor. Photograph: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images
District Court of Massachusetts rules: using immigration law for Trump’s “retribution” against dissent violates the First Amendment 🇺🇸
When leaders punish speech, courts show up for democracy. A faultline ⚡️
We stand by you, Chief Judge William G. Young 🙏
🔗 storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Demonstrators in Tbilisi, Georgia, stand behind symbolic prison bars during a protest demanding the release of political prisoners and new elections. picture alliance / NurPhoto | Jerome Gilles
Laureates of @coe.int's Václav Havel Prize remain jailed. International organisations praise democracy and human rights defenders, yet their leadership fails to act (even to try) to free them.
Recognition without protection risks hypocrisy. A faultline⚡️
🔗 www.ips-journal.eu/topics/democ...
When multilateral organisations yield to a “culture of caution”, they lose legitimacy in the eyes of those who most embody their values, human rights defenders, lawyers, journalists.
That loss is a faultline ⚡️
🔗 www.linkedin.com/pulse/cautio...
Worth listening into this: discussions at the Leonidas Donskis Memorial Conference last week, discussing 50 years of the Helsinki Agreements.
🎬 youtu.be/N_aiZxBA6EU?...
From the UN Human Rights Council to Egypt's prisons: Pres. Sisi issues pardon for 6 prisoners following UN appeal, including @monasosh.bsky.social's brother, prominent activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah.
Today we're happy. Yet, too many around the globe remin behind bars⚡️
@marylawlorhrds.bsky.social
“It’s difficult to know how many children are dying worldwide as a result of the Trump aid cuts…credible estimates…suggest that the child death toll may be in the hundreds of thousands this year alone—likely an even higher number next year.”
This is what a lost decade for humanity looks like⚡️⤵️
We just like this ⤵️ 💜
21.09.2025 08:00 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0Why it matters?
Because the Court reinforces protection for all against unchecked power to medicate & confine ⚖️ 🏥
Abuse of psychiatry must be a priority in any democratic pact⚡️ And it — now, at last — should be high on the agenda of the @coe.int and its Secretary General @alain-berset.coe.int.
This week, the @echr.coe.int ruled in Spivak vs Ukraine:
❌ Unlawful detention
❌ Forced neuroleptics without necessity
❌ Degrading conditions
❌ Lack of remedies
➡️ Dnipro Hospital was described as “Hell on Earth” by @robertvanvoren.bsky.social in 2017:
nv.ua/ukr/opinion/...
Psychiatric abuse in action in Belarus The Hanchar family of the town of Krasnapolle, Mahiliou region, has called upon Belarusian human rights activists and independent journalists to help protect their under-age daughter from psychiatry abuse. The Hanchars claim that their daughter Liudmila is about to be hospitalized by order of local police. According to Liudmila’s elder sister Volha, two policemen accompanied by a psychiatrist paid a visit to the family’s apartment to hospitalize the girl, claiming that she needed immediate medical intervention due to ‘severe mental disorder’, cause by a school incident a year ago, when the girl was badly beaten by her classmates. After Liudmila’s mother said the girl was out and demanded that the officials left the flat, the policemen pinioned the woman’s arms and the doctor made an injection of unknown medicine. Source: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Abuse of psychiatry: a dramatic faultline⚡️⤵️
Dec 2011: Mr Spivak was arrested and sent for psychiatric examination
Dec 2012-Oct 2014: confined in Dnipro Psy. Hospital, forcibly medicated, held in degrading conditions
Gaza’s inadmissible death toll lays bare a faultline⚡️
Robert Malley on lessons from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, Western double standards, and why ending the “carnage” in Gaza must come first—then real diplomacy.
🔗 www.theideasletter.org/essay/diplom...
@open-society.bsky.social
Migration is one of Europe’s deepest faultlines⚡
Worth joining @timep.bsky.social on 18 Sept for Beyond Fortress Europe, which will explore how EU migration policy (un)shapes human rights, civic space & democracy, and what a humane alternative could be.
🔗 timep.org/2025/09/02/b...
Poster for the Eighth Leonidas Donskis Memorial Conference, titled “Back to Square One? The Rise and Fall of the Helsinki Agreements”, held on 18 September 2025 at ISM University of Management and Economics in Vilnius, Lithuania. The design features large red numbers “1975–2025” with a background photo and event details.
Human rights & democracy are not add-ons, rather foundation of European security. Anything else is a faultline⚡️
@switzerlandosce.bsky.social 2026 presidency will test if rules-based security still holds.
By @eleonoramongelli.bsky.social & @florianirminger.ch
🔗 www.swissinfo.ch/eng/war-peac...
Europe’s real security challenge is to reclaim democracy.
Defending civic space, participation and human rights must be a core pillar of EU security policy, as @florianirminger.ch and @vanjasko.bsky.social wrote for @ecnl.bsky.social
🔗 ecnl.org/news/europes...
International Day of Democracy ⚖️🗳️🕊️
A perfect day to welcome @kajsaollongren.bsky.social as EU Special Representative for Human Rights.
Her experience is key to tackling a growing European faultline: human rights within the emerging defence architecture⚡️
States use of “the tools of democracy itself — its laws, institutions, and freedoms — restrict rights, suppress dissent… or stifle criticism” wrote @alain-berset.coe.int, underlining the need new democratic pact.
➡️ Read his piece of May 2025 www.euronews.com/my-europe/20...
A silent crack, a faultline with far-reaching consequences⚡️
Using criminal law to silence dissent undermines democratic security.
All governments should take note of the new @coe.int guidance issued today. Courts should use it to uphold individual rights ⚖️
🔗 www.coe.int/de/web/porta...
Side-by-side image of three flags: the flag of the United States on the left, the United Nations flag in the center, and the flag of China on the right. The image visually symbolises the shifting power dynamics at the UN as the US retreats and China rises.
#UNGA80 opens in New York 📍
A major faultline deepens at the heart of the UN system:
China is reshaping multilateralism to suit its interests — silencing dissent, rewriting norms, evading scrutiny ⚡️
As the US retreats, who will step up?
👉 fpc.org.uk/op-ed-us-ret...
@fpcthinktank.bsky.social
Also read @anneapplebaum.bsky.social's recent piece in @theatlantic.com, “The War About Nothing”
bsky.app/profile/flor...
➡️ Report of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan #HRC60
www.ohchr.org/en/press-rel...
A group of Sudanese women with young children sit in a health clinic, some holding babies, while a man in a white shirt takes notes at a desk, in a UNICEF-supported clinic in war-torn Sudan, where children suffering from severe malnutrition receive treatment and lifesaving care. © UNICEF/Ahmed Mohamdeen Elfatih
Sudan: A War of Atrocities
Over 12 million people displaced; at least 150,000 killed.
Camps shelled & burned 🏚️
Systematic rape & sexual slavery used as weapons of war 💔
Starvation inflicted through sieges & blocked aid 🍂
A crisis the world cannot keep overlooking ⚡️ #HRC60
#COP27 🇪🇬 #COP28 🇦🇪 #COP29 🇦🇿
#COP32 likely Ethiopia 🇪🇹
For #COP31, Australia is negotiating with Türkiye.
Shouldn’t a climate COP be hosted in a place where you don’t risk arrest for speaking about climate justice?
🔗 www.turkiyetoday.com/nation/austr...
Reports on Myanmar presented at #HRC60 🇲🇲
➡️ Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
www.ohchr.org/sites/defaul...
➡️ Report of the Independent Investigative Mechanism for
Myanmar
iimm.un.org/sites/defaul...
Findings on Myanmar at #HRC60 🇲🇲
6764 civilians killed since the coup✖️
Airstrikes, silent paramotors hitting markets, schools, camps ✈️
Forced recruitment, incl Rohingya; children at risk 👶
Aid blocked; hunger surges 🍚
ICC steps on accountability needed ⚖️
HRC60 considering two reports ⤵️
At #HRC60 we’ll follow what shouldn’t be overlooked:
🔹 Human rights in Burma
🔹 Sudan’s deepening crisis
🔹 Central African Republic
🔹 Nicaragua
🔹 Arbitrary detention
🔹 Human rights and climate change
🔹 Reprisals against cooperation with the UN
Watch this space ⚡️
The UN Human Rights Council chamber in Geneva, filled with delegates seated in a circular hall, under a brightly coloured ceiling artwork with vivid blues, yellows, and reds, albeit the 60th session of the Council starting today will not take place in the Council's chamber (room XX of Palais des Nations in Geneva), due to reparations, but will take place in the Hall of Nations.
The 60th session of the UN Human Rights Council opens today ⚖️ #HRC60
Headlines will focus on Gaza & the occupied territories, Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan, Russia, and North Korea.
Many cracks risk going unseen — we'll look where silence reigns, the faultlines that need attention, too⚡️
4 in 10 children cannot read at minimum proficiency. Girls are most affected.
Literacy is not just about reading—it opens the door to rights, freedoms, and futures.
Check out the Children’s Rights to Read launched by @ilatoday.bsky.social
www.literacyworldwide.org/get-involved...
#LiteracyDay
