A/HRC/34/56 international norms. They are cultural rights defenders. The Special Rapporteur concurs with the statement issued by the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, and the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, along with the Working Group on the issue of discrimination against women in law and practice, alerting the international community that a “global trend of fundamentalism and populism” poses increasing risks to women human rights defenders. 39 78. For example, in Israel, Women of the Wall have reportedly been harassed for their activities, including for posting adverts on buses in favour of women’s right to worship in equality and for their legal battle to worship at the Western Wall as men do. The Rabbi of the Wall continues to refuse to allow women to use the Torah scrolls at the wall or to bring their own.40 Moreover, there have been reported attempts at imposing gender segregation in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish population in a number of countries, sometimes even through the exclusion of children from religious schools if their mother drives a vehicle. 41 79. Some Pentecostal churches in Africa reportedly requested that their congregations sign petitions against the ratification of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa, which inter alia guarantees women’s rights to participation in formulating cultural policies (art. 17).42 80. Women human rights defenders and women involved in the arts are regularly targeted by fundamentalists, such as Shaima Rezayee, a 24-year-old music programme presenter in Afghanistan murdered by the Taliban in 2005 shortly after the country’s Ulema Shura (a government council of religious scholars), had criticized her station and others for transmitting “programs opposed to Islam and national values”. 43 In February 2015, Intisar al-Hasiri, a Libyan civil rights activist, blogger and leading member of Tanweer (Enlightenment), a group dedicated to education, music and the arts, was found murdered, likely by Islamist militiamen.44 Attacks against others based on their perceived or assumed “difference” 2. 81. Far right movements using racism and xenophobia as rallying cries have proliferated across Europe and North America. They single out “others” and their cultures for scorn, with immigrants, refugees, Muslims, Jews and Roma and cultural sites associated with them among the most ubiquitous targets. They have increasing numbers of elected representatives, have entered the political mainstream and are gaining in acceptability. Some of these movements, such as neo-Nazis are especially threatening to basic human rights and have proven their willingness to resort to violence and promote openly racist beliefs. Some European countries are between Scylla and Charybdis, simultaneously contending with terrorism carried out by fundamentalists, and far right-wing political extremist groups that capitalize on both this fundamentalist violence and economic malaise to advance their own exclusionary conceptions of citizenship. 39 40 41 42 43 44 “Fundamentalism and populism pose deepening threat to women defending human rights, UN experts warn”, 25 November 2016. Lisa Fishbayn Joffe, “The migration of religious gender norms into secular cultural spaces: UltraOrthodox Judaism in Israel and the United States of America”, October 2016. See National Secular Society, “NSS calls for investigation of Orthodox Jewish schools after driving ban on mothers”, 29 May 2015, and Geraldine Gudefin, “Sex segregation in public life in the Jewish world: the European case”, October 2016. Horn, “Christian fundamentalisms”, p. 13. Reporters Without Borders, “TV presenter shot dead”, 18 May 2005. Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, “Libya: Urgent action needed by the United Nations in the face of gross ongoing violations”, 26 February 2015. 17