December 10, 2024
From left to right: Abdullah Alaoudh, Jenan al-Marzooqi, Ben Saul, Tanya Boulakovski and Sherif Osman speak on transnational repression during an event at the United Nations headquarters - October 30, 2024.
A coalition of civil society organisations and the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism (CT) have warned that state authorities across the MENA region violate fundamental human rights and repress civil liberties, within and beyond their borders, in the name of CT. The organisations have dubbed this growing phenomenon as “transnational repression”.
During an event at the UN Headquarters in New York, MENA Rights Group, a member of the CSO Coalition on Human Rights and Counter-Terrorism, the Global Center on Cooperative Security (Global Center), and the Permanent Mission of Norway to the UN brought together human rights experts and civil society actors from across the MENA to discuss transnational repression in the region. The panel discussion coincided with the publication of the Special Rapporteur’s report in October 2024 on the roles of regional organisations in protecting human rights while countering terrorism.
The panelists detailed the troubling regional trend of state authorities repressing civil society actors and activities under the guise of countering terrorism. They showcased examples of authorities targeting and silencing activists, dissidents, and human rights defenders through CT laws that do not comply with international human rights law. The speakers argued that, while national governments and their security services are responsible for these troublesome policies, regional and international bodies have contributed to legitimise and expand the reach of CT abuse beyond their national borders.
UN Special Rapporteur Ben Saul noted the “fundamental flaws” in the normative framework of regional organisations engaged in CT, mainly ‘the use of vague and overbroad definitions of terrorism which mix national security issues with the narrow question of counterterrorism’. Secondly, he argued that regional organisations engaged in CT do not provide sufficient human rights safeguards., For instance, these organisations do not explicitly protect individuals from refoulement (i.e. extradition to a country where they may face human rights violations). The Special Rapporteur encouraged regional CT organisations to improve their oversight and accountability systems, by enhancing cooperation between member states and regional human rights mechanisms.
The Human Rights Officer Tanya Boulakovski explained that MENA Rights Group has documented the abuse of CT laws at both the national level and the regional level. In MENA countries, transnational repression is being perpetrated under the guise of CT through politically motivated extradition proceedings. Boulakovski detailed the functioning of the Arab Interior Ministers’ Council (AIMC), a specialised body of the Arab League that can circulate state-requested arrest warrants to Arab League Member States. She indicated that the UN CT architecture collaborates with the AIMC despite significant transparency and human rights concerns, and underlined the risk that the AIMC could enable transnational repression while benefitting from a UN stamp.*
To illustrate the pattern of transnational repression, UAE human rights defender and Associate Advocate at the Emirati Detainees Advocacy Centre Jenan al-Marzooqi recalled the extradition of Dr. Khalaf al-Romaithi. An Emirati dissident, he was extradited from Jordan to the UAE outside any judicial process. Al-Romaithi is a member of the “UAE94”, a group of 94 Emirati scholars, activists, lawyers, doctors and human rights defenders who were tried in 2013 after signing a petition for democratic reforms in the UAE. Among them is al-Marzooqi’s father, Abdulsalam al-Marzooqi, who has been arbitrarily detained in the UAE since 2012. These cases exemplify the disturbing pattern of UAE authorities targeting Emirati dissidents and human rights defenders in the name of CT.
Saudi activist and Countering Authoritarianism Senior Director at the Middle East Democracy Centre Abdallah Alaoudh shared a definition of transnational repression as a “foreign state’s attempt to curtail rights and freedoms beyond its own borders”. According to his research, Saudi Arabia is one of the worst perpetrators of transnational repression, using methods such as assaulting, harassing, surveilling, carrying digital attacks, imposing travel bans and extradition to repress its dissident citizens abroad. For instance, the AIMC diffused an arrest warrant issued by Saudi authorities against Hassan al-Rabea, who was extradited from Morocco to Saudi Arabia despite the serious risk of torture and other cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment he faced upon arrival. Alaoudh also referred to the ongoing case of Abdulrahman al-Khalidi, a Saudi dissident at imminent risk of extradition from Bulgaria to Saudi Arabia. Saudi authorities have also arbitrarily detained Alaoudh’s father, Salman Alodah, since 2017 for a peaceful social media post.
U.S.-Egyptian activist Sherif Osman described his arrest in Dubai during a family visit to the UAE in November 2022, when he risked extradition to his country of origin at Egypt’s request. He argued that his personal experience exposes “the broken system” of both INTERPOL and AIMC as police organisations lacking supervision and regulations to hold them accountable for their actions. Osman also pointed out that ‘the mirage of pressuring dictatorships to change their policies is no longer accepted by human rights activists’. According to Osman, Western governments are promoting false narratives about Middle Eastern dictatorships, and their actions are ultimately driven by geopolitical and geo-strategic interests rather than a true commitment to human rights.
After opening the floor to a few questions from the audience, each panelist delivered some concluding remarks and shared recommendations to states, the UN, the international community as well as other relevant stakeholders to mitigate the adverse impact of transnational repression on human rights. Some of them included the importance for UN CT bodies to recognise the real-world impact of their work and partnerships on people’s lives, the urgent need for supervision and accountability for regional counter-terrorism organisations, and the necessity to prevent future abuses by meaningfully prioritising human rights over any other agenda.
* See: MENA Rights Group, Redefining civil society’s role in the UN counter-terrorism architecture: a landscape assessment of the Middle East and North Africa, May 2024, in Global Center on Cooperative Security and Rights & Security International, Independent Civil Society-UN Counterterrorism Engagement: A Scoping Report, May 2024.
To watch the full event, click here.
