Callamard: Absolutely. It’s important to continue inviting them to these events to make them aware that there is a large community of people who fight for press freedom. It’s good for them to confront it; it’s good for them to realize how strong and determined that community is. It’s good for us to interact with them to understand where they are coming from. It’s good for us to ask for feedback and information on specific individual cases. It’s good for me to ask, if I see them, about Jamal Khashoggi and why it is that Saudi Arabia has failed so far to recognize its responsibilities as a state for the killing, and why they think it’s acceptable to imprison people on the basis of their peaceful expression of views.

So I think it’s important that they do interact, that they confront, that they realize that there are benchmarks around the world that they are far from meeting.

Serhan: What would you say to those who argue that there is a sense of hypocrisy in countries attending who don’t adhere to those benchmarks, especially if they leave the conference without any intention of changing their ways?

Callamard: Compare what happened in [last month’s] G20 with what will happen here. Clearly, MbS was using the G20 and his presence at the G20 to brand MbS and to brand Saudi Arabia as an equal to the G20 members, both in terms of their economic might and in terms of their values. He is pretending to be one of them, and the rest of the G20 community is pretending that he is one of them. That is a branding exercise that is extremely powerful, a marketing exercise which is repulsive and should be rejected for what it is.

Here, so far, I have seen nothing like this. I do not see an attempt to brand Saudi Arabia as a member of that community. So to me, it’s a very different dynamic. If at some point there is a photo op with a Saudi representative, the British, and others … that becomes problematic, and that is what we need to protest if this happens.

Read: The U.S.-Saudi alliance is on the brink

Serhan: You are speaking at a panel this afternoon about innovations to end journalist murders. What practical steps can governments take to ensure that what happened to Khashoggi doesn’t happen anywhere else?

Callamard: First, we need to take stock of the environment, and governments [and] civil society need to be aware that this environment may be changing. At the very least, we need to understand that governments now have far more latitude to engage and act [in ways that] less than five years ago were frowned upon and denounced very vigorously. And governments are therefore far more aggressive and systematic in their targeting of voices that are independent, critical, or dissenting. So that’s the bottom line.

What I have done in my report on Khashoggi is two things: I have asked that governments around the world … [that] have become places where people seek safety become fully aware of the fact that running abroad is no longer enough to escape harm and that therefore governments that welcome dissidents, journalists, and so on need to see them as a vulnerable group—a group [that is] vulnerable to targeted attacks by their state of origin or by non-state actors associated with their state of origin. That heightened vulnerability means better responses on the part of the state of asylum or the receiving state.