Gissou Nia Founder & Director, Strategic Litigation Project, Atlantic Council January 17, 2024 “Safeguarding Dissident Voices: Addressing Transnational Repression Threats to Homeland Security” Hello Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ranking Member, members of the House Committee on Homeland Security, and subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Law Enforcement & Intelligence, thank you for inviting me to testify today on the problem of transnational repression and the threat it poses to the United States and Americans wherever they may be in the world. I am a lawyer specialized in international criminal law and human rights law who is the founder and director of the Strategic Litigation Project at the Atlantic Council. I founded the Strategic Litigation Project in 2019 to seek redress for victims and survivors of human rights violations, atrocity crimes, terrorism, and corruption. Part of the work of our team focuses on cross-border crimes and the risk that authoritarian states pose to dissidents around the world. In assessing these threats, we work closely with activists and impacted communities to understand patterns and the nature of these threats—which can often be context and country specific. Our team includes lawyers from the Uyghur community, Venezuela, Cuba, Afghanistan, Iran, and other regions of the world. We are often consulted by governments, UN experts, private practitioners, and targets of transnational repression on what legal and policy options are available to address this growing problem. My testimony today is informed by that work, as well as my experience over the past two decades working with civil society from oppressive regimes around the world and understanding the unique threats that activists, journalists, human rights defenders, and others who speak truth to power face. ** First, I am going to discuss gaps in the law here in the US and new legal tools that can address the problem of transnational repression. Then, I will touch on a few themes I have observed in interacting with communities impacted by this problem and how this can help better inform law enforcement. 1- Congress should pass better criminal and civil legal tools to combat transnational repression. Fighting transnational repression should start with defining, in clear legal terms, exactly what it is. Currently, there is legislation pending before Congress that will help define transnational repression and formulate a strong foreign policy response to this phenomenon. The Transnational Repression Policy Act, introduced by a bipartisan group of Senators and building on a provision Congress passed in the NDAA for 2022 which focused on the abuse of INTERPOL by authoritarian regimes, seeks to do this.