DEFENDING DEMOCRACY IN EXILE Policy Responses to Transnational Repression in 2021, both the origin and the host countries are rated Not Free by Freedom House.2 These regimes are acting together to threaten, detain, and repatriate activists. • • Countries that are home to exiles and diasporas lack the tools to respond to attacks by authoritarian governments. Governments that host targeted groups and individuals need to improve their security, migration, and foreign policies to ensure that they offer appropriate protection for the vulnerable and are capable of enforcing accountability for perpetrators. Nondemocratic governments work together to facilitate transnational repression by weakening universal human rights norms at international organizations. International organizations play a crucial role in documenting specific types of human rights violations stemming from the use of extraterritorial violence. However, in the absence of an agreed framework that identifies these violations as tactics of transnational repression, the efforts of international bodies remain ad hoc and disorganized. • Digital tactics of transnational repression are widespread and diverse, and responses from governments and technology companies are lagging. Exiled dissidents and members of diasporas who are at risk of transnational repression employ digital security strategies—limiting location sharing and using two-factor authentication, for example—to protect themselves from surveillance and threats, but they are outmatched by the resources available to the governments that target them. Transnational repression is strategically employed by autocrats, enabled by underprepared host governments, and spreading rapidly around the world. This report aims to assess the strengths and weaknesses in the global understanding of and responses to transnational repression, so that governments, private companies, and civil society organizations can better equip themselves to defend human rights. Transnational repression should be recognized for what it is: a direct threat to fundamental freedoms, state sovereignty, and democracy, and a disturbing physical manifestation of global authoritarianism. Transnational repression should be recognized for what it is: a direct threat to fundamental freedoms, state sovereignty, and democracy, and a disturbing physical manifestation of global authoritarianism. 2 @FreedomHouse #TransnationalRepression