A/HRC/26/29 • Human Rights Council seminar on effective measures and best practices to ensure the promotion and protection of human rights in the context of peaceful protests, organized by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (Geneva, 2 December 2013); • Launch of the “Protecting civic space and the right to access resources” project, organized by the Community of Democracies and hosted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Sweden (Stockholm, 24 and 25 February 2014). 6. Furthermore, in the above-mentioned period, the Special Rapporteur participated in the following events organized by civil society: • Conference on “Defenders’ days – empowering human rights defenders at risk”, organized by Civil Rights Defenders (Stockholm, 2–5 April 2013); • Course on “International systems of human rights protection”, organized by the Human Rights Centre of the Andrés Bello Catholic University (remote participation, Caracas, 18 September 2013); • Expert meeting on the “Promotion and protection of human rights in assemblies and protests”, organized by the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights (Pretoria, 3 and 4 October 2013); • Seventh Front Line Defenders Platform for Human Rights Defenders at Risk, organized by Front Line Defenders (Dublin, 9–11 October 2013); • Public lectures at McGill and Ottawa universities, and meetings with civil society and State officials (Montreal and Ottawa, 22–25 October 2013); • Regional consultation on “The space for civil society: how can we protect and expand an enabling environment?”, organized by ACT Alliance and DanChurchAid (Blantyre, 25 and 26 November 2013); • Human Rights Summit, organized by Human Rights First (Washington, D.C., 4 December 2013); • Academic visit to Cambodia, organized by the Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (Phnom Penh, 5 and 6 February 2014). III. Threats to the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association for groups most at risk A. Definitions 7. Backlash from the Arab Spring of early 2011 continues to be felt globally, with increasingly less space in which civil society actors can promote or defend collectively a field of mutual interest. Democracy involves more than just exercising the right to vote. For democracy to flourish, people must be guaranteed the whole range of fundamental rights and freedoms, including the rights to freedom of expression and of assembly, as a means to influence the public policies of the State. In recent years many States have responded to people’s assertions of peaceful dissent by violently clamping down on peaceful protests and other forms of assembly, unduly restricting the ability of associations to form and operate, and physically assaulting civil society actors. 8. While those actions have negatively affected all those who choose to exercise their rights to peacefully assemble and freely associate, certain groups are at particular risk of having their space all but vanish. In the present report, the Special Rapporteur focuses on 4