The following is the full text of the closing remarks made by Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights Director of Policy and Projects Brandon Silver to the Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy, on February 19th, 2025.

Congratulations President-Elect Edmundo Gonzalez and leader Maria Corina Machado on receiving the 2025 courage award; and on your important calls to action and three urgent points President Gonzalez highlighted; and the need for the freedom of his compatriots and colleagues currently hiding in the Argentinean Embassy and being denied their fundamental rights and ability to seek safe passage abroad. We must support them in their struggle for freedom, and all the brave Venezuelans who continue to take to the streets, including all those who courageously cast their votes for democratic change, with over 70% of ballots cast for President Gonzalez. He is the democratically elected voice of the Venezuelan people, and we are delighted that he is here with us today.

And may I congratulate each and every one of our brave summit speakers on their courage – despite enduring the unspeakable – to be on this stage and somehow finding the words to describe the indescribable, which should be a clarion call to us all.

Maryam mourning the heinous murder of her child Abolfaz by the terrorist regime in Tehran, which has the highest rate of child executions in the world. The story that Maryam shared is one of many families who are suffering and need the support of the community; Niemat Ahmadi describing the murder of her loved ones and the ongoing genocide – the second genocide in our lifetimes – of her people in Sudan; we heard from Rahima Mahmut the plight of the Uyghurs and Namkyi of prisoners in Tibet; We also heard about the situation in Vietnam and Cuba;

And we heard of the political prisoners on the front line of fighting the impunity that allows for this injustice to prevail. Their fight is the fight for our common humanity, a fight against injustice, and a fight that requires the support of each and every person in this room and at the United Nations.

In alphabetical order I will list the dissidents we heard about today, but each of whom are emblematic of thousands of others who are suffering in silence and represent the struggle for freedom, humanity and democracy in our times – the greatest struggles and defining challenges of our era.

Raif Badawi – whose wife Ensaf was a speaker at this podium a few years ago – where Raif suffered a horrible sentence simply for being a blogger calling for tolerance and pluralism. He received 10 years in prison and 1000 lashes. But while his prison sentence has been completed, he should not be forgotten, as he is suffering a possibly even more torturous fate for a writer: having his voice silenced, threatened with being sent back to prison if he dares to exercise his right to freedom of expression, and deprived of the right to be reunited with his wife and three children in Canada.

Dr. Wang Bingzhang – whose son Times Wang too to the stage earlier today to.describe the plight of their family to also see their father returned to Canada – a Mcgill Medicine graduate who decided to forego his medical career to found the Chinese pro-democracy movement, and who remains today the longest held political prisoner in the world. He was sentenced to a torturous term of life imprisonment in solitary confinement, where he has suffered multiple strokes and ailments as a result of that. He must be liberated immediately.

We had an empty chair on stage in honour of  Rahil Dawut, a Uyghur scholar and community leader  disappeared by China.

As well, we had an empty chair for imprisoned Swedish Iranian doctor Ahmedreza Djalali.

We also had an empty chair for Belarusian opposition leader Maria Kalesnikova, whose sister Tatiana Khomich was a speaker here in previous years, and where she is being persecuted for seeking to give voice to the democratic aspirations of the Belarusian people;

We heard from Sebastien Lai, the son of Hong Kong Media Freedom hero Jimmy Lai. At 77 years of age, he is in solitary confinement for the crimes of talking to journalists while running a newspaper, talking to politicians about politics, and talking to human rights organizations about human rights. For exercising these very basic and fundamental rights, he is suffering in torturous conditions in Hong Kong and undergoing a sham trial, making it a particularly propitious moment for us to intervene and pressure authorities for his release. He is a British citizen and could have easily fled this repression, but he chose to stay and defend all those who were being persecuted and the democratic values they were marching for in the streets.

We heard from mahan Mehrabi, whose brother Mahmoud and sister Maryam are imprisoned in Iran for supporting the woman, life, freedom movement.

And finally, we heard from Betlehem Isaaks, describing the conditions of  her Swedish-Eritrean father Dawit Isaaks, the world’s longest unlawfully detained journalist. The Eritrea government’s mass domestic repression is often described as matching that of North Korea. Yet, there is no international campaign or condemnations commensurate with the scope and scale of their crimes. They call out for justice.

Again, for each of these cases you heard described in this year’s Summit, there are so many more languishing in pain, with lives and loved ones they are struggling to return to. They deserve all of our support.

Their continued imprisonment is an indictment not only of those imprisoning them, but an indictment of all democratic nations not working to secure their freedom.

Their sham trials bring shame, not to those falsely accused, but on the international community that gar too often stands silent.

It should be the names of these political prisoners echoing in the halls of the United Nations, not the voices of their oppressors.

It is the founding resolution of the UN Human Rights Council that gives expression to this, mandating that members should uphold the highest standards in the protection and promotion of human rights, and that they can be removed for gross and systematic rights violations.

Thanks to the work of this Geneva Summit for Human Rights and its 30 international NGO co-sponsors, Russia was removed from the Human Rights Council for the first time ever, and Iran from the UN Women’s Rights Committee.  Together, we can ensure the voices of dissidents prevail over demagogues and dictators. This is a call to action for us all, to build off of these successes and campaign for the removal of the states holding these political prisoners hostage, and to hold the United Nations to its founding principles and mandate. Unjust imprisonment and hostage taking needs to be seen as a liability rather than leverage.

And until then, rights respecting nations should be raising these cases publicly, prominently, and persistently, whether in government statements; diplomatic interventions at the UN like in the Universal Periodic Review – or other dedicated spaces for this, where democratic states are too often silent when called upon – they should speak the names of these dissidents in the halls of the UN, whenever the dictators oppressing them are in the room; as well, these cases should be raised in direct representations with the imprising states, as their bilateral relations far too often prioritize profit over principle, and every country should be raising the cases of political prisoners whenever they might be having a meeting with one of these governments.

It should not be these dissidents sitting in prison, but those dictators imprisoning them.  These are international crimes that should be the subject of international arrest warrants.

As President Edmundo Gonzalez stated in his remarks, there are international treaties that all of the world agrees upon – both democratic states and those violating rights claim to adhere to them – and they must be held accountable to them.

Yet, the International Criminal Criminal – instead of taking action for the over 15,000 politically motivated arbitrary arrests in Venezuela since 2014 – cut a deal with the dictator to cooperate with him

We must pressure these international institutions to uphold international law, adhere to their mandate, and issue international arrest warrants for these international crimes.

Where the international community is not doing what they should, our democratic states should do what they can.

Many of our rule of law nations have domestic criminal processes like universal jurisdiction that can be used to pursue accountability for international crimes. Whether it is the Crimes Against Humanity of Nicolas Maduro or of the Mullahs of Iran, prosecutions should be pursued.

But not only are these prosecutions not happening, the officials of these regimes are being welcomed to our jurisdictions.

Impunity prevails, as these criminals like to vacation and enjoy the banks, businesses, and beaches of our democratic nations when they travel abroad, while denying their citizens these rights at home.

And that gives us leverage.

So long as these criminals like to hide their ill-gotten gains in our democracies and send their children abroad to study in our schools, while at the same time they target the families of dissidents – as we heard from President Gonzalez in the Regime’s targeting of his son in law Rafael Tuderes – we have levers to hold them accountable. They should be subject to targeted sanctions under the Magnitsky laws, as Nazanin Afshin-Jam rightly said in moderating the panel of brave Iranian dissidents.

We have laws in our countries that allow for visa bans, asset seizures, business dealing prohibitions, but we are not using them.

Every rights abusing dictator traveling abroad should be subject to arrest warrants or targeted Magnitsky sanctions.

Vladimir Kara-Murza – who just joined us on the stage with his wife Evgenia – is a case study in the effective use of targeted sanctions. Not only was Vladimir an architect of the Magnitsky laws to ensure that dictators are held accountable, but his case was the first time that sanctions were used to combat political imprisonment and hostage taking, targeting his corrupt judges and jailors, police and prosecutors. Canada led, and then the US, UK and EU followed. Vladimir would share from prison how the threat of sanctions would strike fear in the heart of of his jailors.

Yet, regrettably, it is not only the first case, but so far the only time that sanctions have been used in such a way. They should be universalized and implemented across the board for arbitrary detentions. Whenever someone is unjustly imprisoned, we should immediately take note of the names of the persecutors to ensure they are sanctioned.

Victims of human rights abuses are often also subject to state terrorism, and then themselves charged with terrorism in a weaponization of the legal process by the very same regimes persecuting them. But the only terrorists are these regimes and their proxies, and they must be legally recognized as such.

As we heard from his excellency Shah Reza Pahlavi and the brave panelists that followed, Nazanin, Mahan, Maryam, Saman, the Iranian regime is the greatest state sponsor of terror in the world, and its Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps – the IRGC –  not only murders and maims Iranians at home, but targets anyone who dares to speak out abroad. The IRGC was finally listed in Canada as a terrorist entity, but can operate freely here in Switzerland. So while brave Iranians joined us at our event with the Canadian Embassy in the Palais des Nations to share their testimony, and bravely took to the stage at this Summit, the IRGC can come here to harass and threaten them, which they have already done. Switzerland should designate the IRGC.

The UK, which has seen journalists- including last year’s Summit speakers – subject to assassination attempts on their soil, they allow it to continue to happen with impunity so long as they do not designate the IRGC as terrorists. The European Union should do the same.

And speaking of terrorist regimes, Vladimir Kara-Murza in his remarks described the ceasefire negotiations taking place with Putin’s Russia while excluding Ukraine. Not only must we ensure that the release of prisoners of war are included pursuant to the requirement of the 3rd Geneva Convention, but also all those Ukrainian civilians who were taken Captive, including thousands of children. And we must ensure that Russian dissidents – imprisoned for opposing the Ukraine war – are not forgotten in these discussions, and released in any resolution of the war they tried so hard to prevent.

But taking action for human rights is not only for governments to do. It is not only about laws, but about lives, not just about how we litigate, but about how we live.

Each of us here today can do our part in our own way, whether that is in speaking to our elected officials, writing for our local newspapers, or posting on social media.

Many of the released prisoners who take this stage every year often describe the ordinary act of letter writing as having an extraordinary impact. Sending letters to a political prisoner tells both the prisoner and the country imprisoning them that they are not forgotten, that the world cares, and that we will not relent until they are free.

And while that day might seem too distant, and while it is easy to succumb to cynicism and despair after hearing of all the atrocities described today – and the government inaction that underpins and even enables it all –   I conclude this conference with hope.

I will quote Vladimir Kara-Murza, who used to say this as an historian, but now can cite his lived experience of having endured it, “history shows that freedom will prevail.”

And as Martin Luther King Jr. was fond of saying, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”

I would add that it is because of the brave, noble, and inspiring individuals who spoke earlier today – those dissidents on the front lines fighting for our collective shared values and the future of humanity – it is because of them that this moral arc continues to bend.

And it is because of the justice campaigns – like those led by the Summit and its partners – that we bring this reality closer.

So may all the painful testimonies we heard today be not only an act of remembrance, but a remembrance that – like these brave heroes – we must always act.