Consultancy: Continuation of The Project On The Intimidation of Mps By The Public

The first phase of the IPU’s global study on intimidation of parliamentarians by the public revealed that public hostility toward parliamentarians is a pervasive, escalating, and increasingly digital phenomenon. It produced new data, case studies, and a global survey that, for the first time, mapped the scale and forms of intimidation against MPs by members of the public.

Phase 1 highlighted several critical knowledge gaps. First, although many countries and researchers have documented harassment of politicians, there is still no global and systematic monitoring of intimidation of MPs, particularly in real time. Second, anecdotal evidence shows that intimidation affects how MPs work — leading some to self-censor, disengage from the public, or leave politics altogether — the long-term consequences for parliamentary behavior and democratic trust remain underexplored. Third, responses to date have focused little on prevention — tackling the drivers of hostility and fostering constructive engagement between citizens and representatives. Finally, while the gender dimension of political violence is well documented, including through IPU studies on sexism, harassment, and violence against women in parliament, its integration into monitoring tools and institutional responses requires further thinking, bearing in mind that women and other vulnerable groups are often disproportionately targeted.

The second phase of the project will therefore focus on filling these gaps. It will deepen understanding of how online and offline intimidation by the public shapes MPs’ behavior and the functioning of parliaments; explore the political, social, and technological root causes of intimidation; and identify effective institutional mechanisms and good practices for protection and prevention. A key component will be a feasibility study for a Global Tracker on Intimidation of Parliamentarians. The aim is to explore options for a global monitoring mechanism, building on existing initiatives, ensuring integration of a human rights and gender perspectives, and keeping open the question of scope and design. The feasibility study will also examine whether and how to incorporate incidents of state-sponsored violence, whose examination falls under the mandate of the IPU Committee on the Human Rights of Parliamentarians (CHRP), and to ensure complementarity with IPU studies on sexism, harassment, and violence against women in parliament.

**Tasks**

The consultant(s) will undertake the following tasks under the supervision of the IPU’s Human Rights Programme Manager:

- Advance global monitoring capacity: Draft and test a feasibility study for a Global Tracker on Intimidation of Parliamentarians designed to address the current fragmentation of data. The study will:

- identify and assess existing national, regional and international monitoring tools;
- identify opportunities to build on and integrate them;
- explicitly consider the incorporation of both public and state-sponsored violence, online and offline;
- embed gender sensitivity and intersectionality; and
- propose safeguards against misuse (e.g. misrepresenting public intimidation as “worse” than state violence).
- Deepen understanding of impacts: Conduct comparative research on how intimidation shapes MPs’ behavior, discourse, visibility, and policy choices, with particular focus on self-censorship, withdrawal from online platforms, and premature exits from political life.
- Explore root causes: Analyze political, social, and technological drivers of intimidation (polarization, distrust in institutions, algorithmic amplification) and how these intersect with gender, belonging to a historically disadvantaged minority, age, and other such as for example marital status, socio-economic background, level of education )
- Mainstream gender throughout: Ensure that national case studies, monitoring tools, and toolkits explicitly integrate the gender perspective and build on existing IPU and other organizations’ research on violence against women in politics.
- Identify and share institutional responses: Collect and compare national legal and politcy frameworks and parliamentary practices (codes of conduct, reporting systems, support services) with a view to compiling and disseminating practical templates and toolkits for parliaments worldwide.
- Examine the role of algorithmic amplification and (non)coordinated online abuse; explore uses of AI and data analytics for threat detection and mitigation; and assess the responsibilities of tech platforms and the effectiveness of existing mitigation and accountability frameworks.
- Conduct new national case studies (in addition to the existing ones in Argentina, Benin, Italy, Netherlands and Malaysia), especially in underrepresented regions, on intimidation of parliamentarians, including by, if needed, travelling to identified countries to interview parliamentarians and other relevant stakeholders
- Contribute to other areas of IPU work, if nee