As the LI HRC reflects on 2020 this Human Rights Day, we recall a year where a global pandemic has too often been used as an excuse for authoritarians and dictators, across the globe, to increase their own power at the expense of the rights of their people or the opposition in their countries.

In a statement to the 44th UN Human Rights Council earlier this year, Liberal International raised the actions of for example Filipino President Duterte, who threatened to shoot lockdown violators on sight. In China, officials and health professionals faced sanctions when they first raised the alarm at the emergence of the virus.

Unfortunately, the tendency of authoritarian leaders to use the pandemic for their own gain has not slowed as the year progressed. 2020 has seen the democratic space of people across the world shrink, as mass surveillance and attacks on freedom of expression and assembly are introduced under the guise of fighting the pandemic.

It is essential that liberals remain vigilant and act to ensure that we do not remember 2020 only as a year when freedom was forced to take a step back.

Read the full statement below.