A/HRC/37/51 uncertain immigration status and threats against their family and community that prevent any return home. 61. Contractual relations with non-State actors can also restrict the rights of people on the move to defend their rights. Private employment contracts may prohibit people on the move from engaging in political activity, free expression or peaceful assembly. Although these contracts are private, the State has an important and pivotal role to play in prohibiting such restrictions by rejecting their validity as contractual terms under national law. 62. Non-State actors also have a growing role in the regulation of people on the move and the defenders who advocate on their behalf. States outsource some of their core functions with regard to migration, including the inspection of travel documents, the provision of social housing and, in some cases, the management of detention facilities. These practices expose people on the move and their allies to a range of new challenges and risks. Outsourcing often restricts the access of defenders to information insofar as non-State actors fall outside legislation and policies regulating freedom of information. The involvement of non-State actors may also limit the ability of defenders to seek redress through the courts. By removing the State from the situation, outsourcing removes the usual methods of accountability and advocacy for human rights defenders. Private actors have responded to advocacy by defenders of people on the move by filing defamation lawsuits that are, in effect, strategic litigation against public participation suits intended to censor, intimidate and silence critics. VIII. Creating an enabling environment for defending the rights of people on the move A. Conclusions 63. Defenders of people on the move seek to make concrete the commitments of the international community to people on the move. As noted in the report of the Secretary General on addressing large movements of refugees and migrants (A/70/59) (prior to the adoption of the New York Declaration), “there has been an outpouring of support from civil society, and in every region countless individuals have spontaneously welcomed new arrivals, often literally opening the doors of their homes to them. […] These positive examples can serve as a basis for strengthened collective action.” Although the number of people on the move is increasing, States too often remain hostile to movement across borders, whether internal or international. The hostility of States towards people on the move and their defenders is a result of the confluence of the desire to maximize economic development through the commodification of people on the move, the securitization of discussions of all types of migration, and the problematic role of citizenship in discourses on rights. 64. In a submission to the Special Rapporteur, the Government of Greece highlighted the importance of the situation of defenders of people on the move, given that, “in most cases, people on the move, having no vote or other means to make their voices heard, depend on advocates and defenders to a higher than normal degree to make their concerns known.” Defenders of people on the move are also often less visible than other types of human rights defenders owing to a number of factors, including the location of their work and the fact that people on the move are themselves marginalized. Other identities or occupations that defenders have may prevent them from being seen as human rights defenders working with people on the move. They may see themselves as medical doctors or humanitarian workers, or as working within the refugee rights movement rather than as human rights defenders. 65. The challenges that defenders face cannot be separated from those confronting those whose rights they defend, not least because many of the latter are also the former. Just as people on the move too frequently face policies designed to create a hostile environment, so too do defenders acting in solidarity with and advocating for the rights of people on the move face a growing number of restrictions and controls. 16