On September 13, 2024, on the occasion of the 57th session of the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council (HRC) in Geneva, MENA Rights Group and the American Bar Association co-organised a side event highlighting the detrimental human rights impact of administrative counter-terrorism (CT) measures in the MENA region.
The panel discussion brought together human rights experts and civil society actors from across the region. These included Abdullah al-Juraywi, the Monitoring and Campaigns Officer at ALQST for Human Rights, the Emirati human rights activist and journalist Ahmad al-Nuaimi, Yasmeen el-Hasan, the Advocacy Officer at the Palestinian Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), Samar Khamis, a Human Rights Officer at the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), and Tanya Boulakovski, a Human Rights Officer at MENA Rights Group. The discussion was moderated by Alexandra Tarzikhan, a Legal Advisor to the American Bar Association Center for Human Rights.
In her introduction, Tarzikhan recalled that in September 2024, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights presented his report on Terrorism and Human Rights before the 57th session of the HRC, which addresses the negative impact of administrative CT measures on human rights around the world. She presented the event’s two main objectives: highlighting the weaponisation of CT administrative measures against individuals and organisations and exploring potential strategies to mitigate their adverse consequences on rights and freedoms in the region.
In her introductory remarks, Khamis presented a few key points from the High Commissioner’s report. Noting the absence of a generally accepted definition, she described administrative CT measures as coercive measures that are “a priori preventive in nature” and “restrict certain human rights without laying criminal charges”, citing examples such as administrative detention, terrorist listing, movement restrictions as well as travel bans and citizenship stripping. She indicated that these measures may also be “characterised as punitive due to their nature, intention, and extensive human rights impact” before pointing out that they nonetheless do not necessarily trigger the application of legal safeguards used in criminal justice, creating a de facto gap in human rights protection.
Boulakovski explained that the most prominent pattern observed by MENA Rights Group in the region is the abuse of CT laws and policies to target and silence individuals and organisations peacefully exercising their fundamental rights and freedoms. Setting the scene, she shed light on the flawed CT framework that fails to comply with international human rights standards. This framework allows authorities across the MENA to arbitrarily impose administrative measures, with three core issues at the national level. First, domestic CT laws contain overly vague and broad definitions of terrorism. Second, entities in charge of enforcing these laws operate with excessive powers and without judicial oversight. Finally, authorities set up exceptional jurisdictions specifically for terrorism cases that lack judicial independence.
In the second part of the event, civil society actors from MENA countries shared their first-hand experience on the subject. Al-Juraywi started by discussing the arbitrary and systematic use of travel bans on Saudi human rights defenders in relation to their peaceful human rights work as well as the subsequent ‘unofficial’ travel bans imposed on their relatives.
Through his personal experience as an Emirati human rights activist who was tried in absentia in the “UAE84” trial for terrorism offences, al-Nuaimi emphasised the heavy impact that terrorism listing and other similar administrative measures can have not only on one’s life but also on the lives of family members.
Finally, el-Hasan spoke about the listing of the Palestinian UAWC as a terrorist organisation by Israel, along with 5 other Palestinian civil society organisations (CSOs). She reframed the use of CT measures against Palestinian individuals and CSOs within the broader context of colonialism and the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, concluding that Israel's framework of terrorist designations is actually “rooted in authoritative and imperialist ideologies and mythologies.”
After opening the floor to a few questions from the audience, each panellist delivered some concluding remarks and shared recommendations to MENA states, the UN, the international community and other relevant stakeholders to remedy the adverse impact of administrative CT measures on human rights. Some of these included the establishment of accessible, precise and clear definitions of CT laws, the implementation of all procedural safeguards usually associated with criminal law to administrative CT measures, and the need for regular and independent monitoring committees focusing specifically on the prevention of detrimental administrative CT measures to ensure state accountability.
*To watch the full discussion, click here.
