Blog

Recruiting an RA for work on the Proposed EU Directive on Combating Terrorism

IDI-logo1I am very pleased to be joining in the research team of the ERC-funded project “Proportionality in Public Policy“. This project is led by Professor Mordechai Kremnitzer at the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI).

As part of this research project a working group is being organised, entitled “The Consideration of Rights in the Process of Developing Policy for Combating Terrorism”. The research group will run for approximately one year (roughly May 2016-July 2017).

As part of the research group, I will be conducting a case study on the topic of “The European Directive on Combating Terrorism: Human Rights in a Complex Policy Context”, alongside researchers conducting similar case studies in other jurisdictions.

As part of my participation in the working group, IDI will fund research assistance devoted to this case study for approximately 450 hours, and up to a maximum of €12,000 gross. Although recruited and supervised by me, the RA will enter an employment contract with IDI, and payment will be done directly by IDI to the RA. IDI maintains the possibility to end its employment contract with the RA, subject to providing due notice.

I am now inviting applications for this post. The RA contract will run for the duration of the working group, and it is expected that around 1.5 days per week would be devoted, on average, by the RA to the project. The work will require the RA to undertake extensive literature review, document collation, document review, timeline construction, and possibly interviews with associated transcription. The work will result in both a case study to be published on the IDI webpage and at least one major peer reviewed article, which may be coauthored by the RA and me. The RA should have a good awareness of the concept and law relating to proportionality in human rights law (preferably comparative perspectives thereon), EU law, and counter-terrorism, or the capacity to quickly acquire appropriate expertise in these fields. Research experience would be an advantage. The RA will also be able to work independently, to firm timelines, and to an extremely high standard.  S/he will be a curious, independent thinker with a clear interest in human rights, the EU, counter-terrorism, proportionality, policy making, or a combination of these. S/he will not necessarily be a lawyer.

The RA will not have any formal employment or other relationship with the University of Birmingham as a result of this post, although s/he may have access to UoB library and other resources as appropriate. The RA need not be based in Birmingham, although s/he should be available for regular meetings by Skype and, where possible, in person. No additional travel expenses will be paid beyond the core RA payment.

For more information on the project, please contact Prof. Fiona de Londras at f.delondras@bham.ac.uk

Applicants should send (by email) a CV, a writing sample (up to a maximum of 8,000 words), and a covering letter outlining suitability for this post to Prof. de Londras at f.delondras@bham.ac.uk by 22 April 2016.

 

 

Column on the Brussels Attacks

Last evening The Conversation published a column from me on the terrible attacks in Brussels yesterday. The piece has already been picked up and reprinted widely, including by ABC’s The Drum and the Sydney Morning Herald, and can be read in full here. The introduction is as follows:

The attacks of March 22 in Brussels were shocking, but not surprising. They reinforced what many have known for years: Belgium has a serious problem with terrorism.

For a long time, security analysts have expressed anxiety about the depth and extent of radicalisation and fundamentalism in the country. It is thought that Belgium has the highest per capita rate of foreign terrorist fighters of any EU country. A February 2016 “high-end estimate” puts that number at 562 out of a population of just over 11 million.

Last November it was revealed that some of the Paris attackers had Belgian connections and were known to the security forces there, and Brussels was virtually locked down for almost a week.

Over recent years there have been attacks on Belgian museums, supermarkets and trains, raising questions about why the country cannot seem to effectively tackle the challenges of insecurity.

As ever, the answer is not a simple one. Rather, as observed by Tim King, Belgium’s “failures are perhaps one part politics and government; one part police and justice; one part fiscal and economic. In combination they created the vacuum that is being exploited by jihadi terrorists”.

The EU Referendum and Women’s Voices

In the past week there has (finally) been some talk of the importance of ensuring that women’s voices are heard in the EU ‘Brexit’ referendum that will take place here in the UK on 23 June 2016. Not only is this vital because the debate has, thus far, been dominated by the voices of men (and particularly male politicians), but also because of the enormous impact that the EU has had and continues to have on women’s lives inside and outside of the Union. On this theme, this week’s Birmingham Brief (a weekly short briefing published by the University of Birmingham) is written by me and highlights some key points about EU membership and its benefits for women.The Brief is available here, and the conclusion reads:

It is incumbent upon all factions in the debates on the UK’s future in the EU to address the Union’s role in developing, applying and enforcing legal standards that promote gender equality. This requires a broadening of the debate and reflection on how EU membership has fundamentally impacted on the lives of women. Women’s voices must be central to the debate on the EU; women’s experiences must be accounted for in any argument that the UK should leave the EU; and plans for the continued protection of women’s rights at home and abroad must be articulated by those advocating a vote to leave the EU.

 

 

Reflecting on the Human Rights Council and Counter-Terrorism

I was very pleased to be invited to speak at the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade NGO Forum last Friday. The event, which took place in Dublin Castle, involved a wide range of speakers reflecting on the first ten years of the Human Rights Council and on Ireland’s time as a member thereof. In my short remarks, I was asked to consider the extent to which the Council has managed to address emerging issues, and in doing so I reflected especially on counter-terrorism. In 7 minutes, of course, one can hardly be comprehensive, and so the remarks below (which are my speaking notes from the event, though not a strict account of what I said) were necessarily selective and intended to give a general account.

For the past ten years, the HRC has been part of a broad patchwork of international human rights institutions working to identify and address the profound challenges raised and unveiled by the ‘War on Terror’ and broader counter-terrorism regimes and operations. As counter-terrorism has internationalised (with the involvement of the Security Council, for example), and innovated (with the continued adoption of technology-based approaches to security) the importance of the HRC’s ability to consider its implications for rights in an international forum involving all states has been abundantly clear. The value of this can be illustrated by reference to just three areas of attention and activity.

The first is the Council’s commitment to taking a broad and inclusive approach to addressing and understanding the rights-related implications of countering terrorism beyond implications for civil and political rights per se. This approach reflects the basic proposition of indivisible rights, and the reality that social and economic conditions, as well as civil and political ones, require attention if terrorism and counter-terrorism are to be fully understood and addressed. Furthermore, in the mandate of the Special Rapporteur (created by the Commission but renewed in 2010 and 2013 by the Council), there is a particular reference to accounting for the implications of counter-terrorism for gender (paragraph (c)), and the first Special Rapporteur (Prof. Martin Scheinin) was clearly attentive to that, including devoting almost an entire report to gender and counter-terrorism in 2009. Relatedly, the Council has paid attention to socio-economic conditions in assessing the root causes of terrorism and identifying the potential of a rights-based approach to addressing radicalisation, extremism, inter-personal violence, persistent insecurity, economic inequality, and other endemic problems that feed into the causes and manifestations of terrorism. In this, the Council’s holding of, for example, interactive dialogues with mandate holders on terrorism and on extreme poverty is very welcome and clearly chimes with the inter-connectedness recognised in the Sustainable Development Goals, for example.

A second area of note is the attention paid by the Council and its mandate holders to the implications of counter-terrorism for the right to privacy and other rights that flow from the “digital embrace” in contemporary counter-terrorism. The turn towards technology-based solutions to security problems is reflected particularly in the instigation of systems of mass surveillance, attacks on encryption and the principle of net neutrality, and a sometimes patchy commitment to privacy by design in technology research and development. The Special Rapporteur has long been attentive to these trends. As early as 2009, Prof. Scheinin argued that counter-terrorism’s implications for privacy required serious attention, that states should be required to establish legitimate justifications for infringements on privacy, and that the Human Rights Committee should adopt a new general comment on Article 17 of the ICCPR. There is a clear connection between the work of the Special Rapporteur, the interventions of the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression, the General Assembly’s 2013 call for reflection on privacy in the digital age, the report of the High Commissioner on the same theme in 2014, and the establishment by the Council of a Special Rapporteur on the Right to Privacy in the Digital Age in 2015.

A third area that illustrates the Council’s ability to address emerging issues is that of targeted killing by unmanned aerial vehicles, otherwise known as drones. During the tenure of the present Special Rapporteur, Ben Emmerson QC, this has been an area of concerted attention. That tenure coincides with the striking expansion of targeted killing by drone by the Obama Administration and its adoption (to a far lesser extent) by the United Kingdom. While the Special Rapporteur on Extra-Judicial Killing has also been attentive to this, Emmerson has paid it particularly tenacious attention. His reports on this issue have starkly illustrated the need for transparency, accountability, enquiries when civilians are killed (as is often the case), and a concerted effort by the international community to agree on the applicable legal standards for the application as appropriate of international human rights and international humanitarian law to drone killings. This work, which has been supported by the Council including through holding panel meetings on the matter, has been hugely influential, being cited in (for example) the 2015 Council of Europe Report on the Need to Uphold Human Rights and International Law in Respect of Drones and Targeted Killings.

Thus, when I turn my mind to the key question I was asked to consider today–whether the HRC has been able to ensure the existing human rights framework can address emerging challenges–and apply it to the counter-terrorism context, I am generally inclined to answer in the affirmative. However, two inter-related points of caution apply. The first relates to the fact that some member states of the Human Rights Council continue to use counter-terrorism law domestically in order to quash dissent, undermine freedom of expression, prevent protest, entrench surveillance, and maintain power. Others are among the most prominent counter-terrorism entrepreneurs, engaged in innovating many of the most challenging technologies and approaches to countering terrorism and arguing for recalibration downwards of vital human rights protections in the name of security. The apparent disconnect between the practices of member states and the activities of the Council per se is clearly undesirable.

The second concern is the heavy reliance on the Special Rapporteur to advance rights work in the context of counter-terrorim in the Council. Not only does such a reliance depend heavily on individuals and thus potentially make the work vulnerable through phenomena such as lack of institutional memory, cult of personality, and variability of resources, but it also means that there are dangers of replication and competition in work across the mandates of different rapporteurs, and that the advances made might be undermined by the appointment (by the member states) in future of ‘weaker’ special rapporteurs, designed to ‘un-tooth’ the mandate.