Statewatch is a non-profit organization founded in 1991 that monitors civil liberties and other issues in the European Union and encourages investigative reporting and research. [1]
The predecessor to Statewatch was "State Research" (1977-1982), which produced a bi-monthly bulletin and carried research.
The organization has three free databases: a large database of all its news, articles and links since 1991, [2] the Statewatch European Monitoring and Documentation Centre (SEMDOC) which monitors all new justice and home affairs measures since 1993. [3] [4]
Among other activities, it monitors anti-terrorist legislation, has a Passenger Name Record observatory, is concerned about asylum issues, data privacy, biometrics, etc.
The organization and its director, Tony Bunyan, have received awards for their civil rights activism including a 1998 award from the British Campaign for Freedom of Information [5] and the 2011 "Long Walk" award at the Liberty's Human Rights Awards. [6]
Information privacy is the relationship between the collection and dissemination of data, technology, the public expectation of privacy, contextual information norms, and the legal and political issues surrounding them. It is also known as data privacy or data protection.
Europol, officially the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation, is the law enforcement agency of the European Union (EU). Established in 1998, it is based in The Hague, Netherlands, and serves as the central hub for coordinating criminal intelligence and supporting the EU's member states in their efforts to combat various forms of serious and organized crime, as well as terrorism.
Liberty, formerly, and still formally, called the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL), is an advocacy group and membership organisation based in the United Kingdom, which challenges unjust laws, protects civil liberties and promotes human rights. It does this through the courts, in Parliament and in the wider community. Liberty also aims to engender a "rights culture" within British society. The NCCL was founded in 1934 by Ronald Kidd and Sylvia Crowther-Smith, motivated by their humanist convictions.
Memorial is an international human rights organisation, founded in Russia during the fall of the Soviet Union to study and examine the human rights violations and other crimes committed under Joseph Stalin's reign. Subsequently, it expanded the scope of its research to cover the entire Soviet period.
Claude Ajit Moraes is a British Labour Party politician and campaigner, who was a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for London between 1999 and the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the EU on 31 January 2020. He was Chair of the Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee, Deputy Leader of the European Parliamentary Labour Party and Vice-President of the Socialists and Democrats Group in the European Parliament.
Privacy International (PI) is a UK-based registered charity that defends and promotes the right to privacy across the world. First formed in 1990, registered as a non-profit company in 2002 and as a charity in 2012, PI is based in London. Its current executive director, since 2012, is Dr Gus Hosein.
Henrik Lax is a Finnish politician and former Member of the European Parliament with the Swedish People's Party, Member of the Bureau of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe and sat on the European Parliament's Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs.
Kinga Gál is a Hungarian politician and Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from Hungary. She is a member of Fidesz.
The Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) is a committee of the European Parliament that is responsible for protecting civil liberties and human rights, as listed in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.
The European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI) is an academic research institute based in Flensburg, Germany, that conducts research into minority issues, ethnopolitics, and minority-majority relations in Europe. ECMI is a non-partisan and interdisciplinary research institution. It is a non-profit, independent foundation, registered according to German Civil Law.
Law enforcement in Croatia is the responsibility of the Croatian Police, which is the national police force of the country subordinated by the Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of Croatia, carrying out certain tasks, the so-called, police activities, laid down by law.
The Movement for Defence of Voters' Rights "Golos", formerly GOLOS Association is a Russian organisation established in 2000 to protect the electoral rights of citizens and to foster civil society. As of 2008, the organisation covers 40 Russian regions. It is the only election watchdog active in Russia that is independent of the Russian government.
The area of freedom, security and justice (AFSJ) of the European Union (EU) is a policy domain concerning home affairs and migration, justice as well as fundamental rights, developed to address the challenges posed to internal security by collateral effects of the free movement of people and goods in the absence of border controls or customs inspection throughout the Schengen Area, as well as to safeguard adherence to the common European values through ensuring that the fundamental rights of people are respected across the EU.
Gilles de Kerchove d'Ousselghem is a Belgian senior European Union official. He was director in the general directorate of Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) in the General Secretariat of the Council of the European Union from 1995 – 2007, he has since been appointed as EU Counter-terrorism Coordinator, succeeding Gijs de Vries.
Media freedom in the European Union is a fundamental right that applies to all member states of the European Union and its citizens, as defined in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights as well as the European Convention on Human Rights. Within the EU enlargement process, guaranteeing media freedom is named a "key indicator of a country's readiness to become part of the EU".
The Netherlands Helsinki Committee (NHC) is a non-governmental organization that promotes human rights and strengthens the rule of law and democracy in all countries of Europe, and the Central Asian countries participating in the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).
Vladimír Bilčík is a Slovak university lecturer and politician of the Slovak party Democrats. He has been serving as a Member of the European Parliament since 2019. During the 2019 European Parliament election in Slovakia, Bilčík ran as the leader of Democrats, as part of a coalition with Progressive Slovakia. He got 26,202 preferential votes in total.
borderline-europe - human rights without borders e. V. is a non-governmental organisation which, through independent investigations and public relations work, advocates the protection of human rights, especially at the EU's external borders. It is based in Berlin and has two branches, on the islands of Sicily and Lesbos. The organisation was founded in 2007 by Judith Gleitze, Harald Glöde, Stefan Schmidt and Elias Bierdel. In 2012 borderline-europe was awarded the Aachen Peace Prize. Its founding was at least partly a response to the 2004 case of the German rescue ship ‘Cap Anamur’ in which, after the rescue of 37 men in distress at sea, the ship's captain, Stefan Schmidt, and the organisation's chairman, Elias Bierdel were arrested and held in Italy before being acquitted, 5 years later, of aiding and abetting irregular entry.
The Syria Justice and Accountability Centre (SJAC) is a non-profit justice and legal documentation organization that monitors and reports on violations by various actors in the Syrian Conflict. Its documentation includes data on the Syrian government, opposition forces, ISIS, and foreign actors. The organization was started by the group Friends of the Syrian People in 2012, who had a stated goal of preserving documentation and creating a centralized source for data collection. SJAC primarily works on issues related to transitional justice, criminal accountability, and human rights violations in Syria.