A/HRC/40/60 status raises concerns about the Commission’s independence and impartiality, views of women’s rights and sexual rights and the space for defending human rights in the continent. Threats to status 52. In some situations, women defenders have experienced threats to their status, whether as citizens, migrants or refugees. In Bahrain, women defenders are at risk of denaturalization. Some women defenders on the move are fearful that their work permits may be revoked or their asylum claims jeopardized because of their activism (see A/HRC/37/51). In November 2018, Ana Quirós, 18 director of the NGO Centro de Información y Servicios de Asesoría en Salud, was stripped of her Nicaraguan citizenship of over 20 years and deported to Costa Rica. 53. Women defenders who seek asylum in other countries are vulnerable to extradition requests. According to information provided to the Special Rapporteur, in 2017, opposition activist, journalist and blogger Zhanara Akhmetova, who had sought asylum in Ukraine, was detained for a month in a pre-detention centre in Kyiv because of an extradition request by Kazakhstan. Physical incarceration 54. Some women are held against their will for their activism, for example in immigration detention centres or psychiatric institutions. Young lesbian defenders have been incarcerated and forced to undergo treatment to “correct” their homosexuality.19 55. According to information received by the Special Rapporteur, in March 2018, the Kazakh activist and blogger Ardak Ashym was forcibly placed in a psychiatric facility for over a month and subjected to psychiatric treatment, including with psychotropic drugs. 20 She was accused of inciting social discord under article 174 of the Criminal Code of Kazakhstan and of insulting a State official through the mass media under article 378. She was released after international pressure and went abroad to avoid forced hospitalization. Attacks against collectives and movements of women human rights defenders 56. At times, States specifically target feminists and movements of women defenders, using different forms of repression, criminalization, hate speech and the incitement of violence. 57. Since the outbreak of the political crisis in Nicaragua in April 2018, for example, the Mesoamerican Women Human Rights Defenders Initiative (IM-Defensoras) has documented the cases of 273 women human rights defenders who have experienced 370 different types of attacks.21 More than a hundred such women were arbitrarily detained by the police and/or paramilitaries, of which 53 remain detained and 40 have been formally charged. Two trans women defenders were executed. Around 75 women defenders have been forcibly displaced internally or externally, and 22 had to flee with their families. Women defenders, their organizations and their families have experienced harassment, surveillance and threats and have been slandered and defamed systematically by the Nicaraguan Government and its allies. VII. Challenges and risks faced by specific groups of women human rights defenders 58. 18 19 20 21 A woman human rights defender may belong to several of the following groups. AL NIC 4/2018. Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development, Claiming Rights, Claiming Justice: A Guidebook on Women Human Rights Defenders (2007). Amnesty International, “Kazakhstan: civil activist detained in psychiatric facility – Ardak Ashym”, (27 April 2018). Data are from the Nicaraguan Women Human Rights Defenders Initiative and the registry of attacks against such defenders of IM-Defensoras (November 2018). 11