The Global Network for Rights and Development (GNRD) held a side event on June 25, 2015 during the UN Human Rights Council summer session at Geneva, Switzerland.
The discussion also looked at the challenges of incorporating the human rights perceptive into national security strategies at a policy level, but also at the tactical level. As well as to address the role of the UN Human Rights Commission and civil society organisations in pursuit of implementing effective safeguard mechanisms. The title of the event was to explore as to what extent human rights should factor into strategic decision making and counter-terrorism policies.
The session was moderated by Dr. Josè Sanmartin, Alicante University, Spain; and addressed by the Syrian intellectual and human rights activist Dr. Haytham Manna and Mr. Imtiaz Gul, Executive Director, CRSS.
Both Manna and Gul were given a set of questions to address. Both agreed that geo-politics had given birth to state-sponsored terrorism and extremist movements which have become existential threat to many states and destabilizing for others. They pointed out that terrorism and extremism, coupled with bad governance, had led to marginalization of youth and minority groups in many countries. The increasing marginalization born out of conscious political motives is also preventing real mitigating strategies, they said. At the same time the status quo in countries such as Libya, Syria, Iraq, Egypt is also pushing many young me into radicalization which eventually prompts them to join Al-Qaeda or ISIL.
Drone attacks, torture as an instrument of policy, illegal renditions and circumvention of law by setting up detention centers in third countries, they said, also flew in the face of the West’s oft-peddled rule of law advocacy, the speakers pointed out.
Dr.Manna underlined the need for redefining the social contract in some of the embattled countries and the imperative for connecting the common people with the government through a more sensitive and responsible social contract to prevent them from falling in a state of despair and hopelessness. The civil society across the globe, he said must strive to raise voice against states which are consciously investing in terrorism and extremism to pursue their own national interests. It results directly in the undermining of the target countries’ national interests, pointed out Dr.Manna. The civil society and the media must all work together for justice, inclusion, and to end discrimination of any kind. No state should be allowed to discriminate among its citizens based on faith, ethnicity or race.
Both speakers reminded the audience of the Human Rights Council’s Resolution Protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, passed during the 29th Session in March 2015. The Resolution urged member States to ensure that any measure taken or means employed to counter terrorism, including theuse of remotely piloted aircraft, complies with their obligations under international law, including international human rights law and international humanitarian law; It also urged states to ensure that measures taken to counter terrorism are not discriminatory, and not to resort to profiling based on stereotypes founded on ethnic, racial, religious or any other ground of discrimination prohibited by international law.
Following are Mr. Imtiaz Gul’s (IG) answers to the GNRD panel.
IG: Thanks to GNRD, for crafting and promoting a different narrative on human rights and strategies to counter-terrorism. This is indeed an extremely useful contribution to the discourse on human rights, counter-radicalization, and the need to create a balance between responses to terrorism and upholding the fundamental democratic values.
GNRD: WHAT ARE THE CORE ERRORS IN COUNTER-TERRORISM? WHAT COULD BE MADE TO IMPROVE THESE POLICIES?
IG: The CT has been given a religious color, with the result that the Muslims in general are being associated with terrorism and extremism. The stereo-typing of Muslims as the promoters and harbingers of terrorism directed at the west is the biggest error of the US-led geopolitics.
Second biggest mistake is legitimization of illegal renditions, drone attacks, torture and expanded intelligence operations through the INGOs. That has severely dented the trust of people in the US, INGOs and the Rule of Law.
GNRD: WHAT ARE THE MAIN CHALLENGES IN FIGHTING TERRORISM WHILE ADHERING TO INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS LAW?
IG: Major challenge is how to preserve individual freedoms, right to privacy and dignity, right to information and the right to association. Recent revelations that the British intelligence had gained access to almost all the Internet users in Pakistan offers another example of how the right of privacy has been breached at will. In a document marked “TOP SECRET STRAP2 UK EYES ONLY” allegedly issued by Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the spy agency discusses its computer network exploitation (CNE) and software reverse engineering efforts abroad.
“Capability against Cisco routers developed by this means has allowed a CNE presence on the Pakistan Internet Exchange which affords access to almost any user of the internet inside Pakistan,” it said, referring to a US technology company that provides most of the world’s network Infrastructure.
The revelations were based on a cache of files from 2008 released by former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden and reported by journalists Andrew Fishman and Glenn Greenwald in The Intercept, an online news outlet, this week.(June 23/24, 2015).
Swooping of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phones or those of French President Holland also explains enough that neither VIPs nor commoners’ privacy is safe anymore.
We have to be clear, and understand that extraordinary conditions require extraordinary actions. At times, Human rights compromised, you have to deviate for fundamental human rights or compromise them for the larger good of the community– that is for the safety of the majority of the citizens. In unusual situations, you are taking temporary measures against a small number of people but they may be for the protection of the larger, extended community, and for upholding values.
These are certain defensive measures but they are meant to preserve long-term interests. But the problem begins when the small minority – which is threatening the interest of the majority – is viewed by outsiders as the representative of the majority; the stereo-typing of Muslims, for instance. The image of Muslims in Europe and the Americas in general today suffers from this stereo-tying.
GNRD: HOW TO IMPROVE THE ACCOUNTABILITY ON HUMAN RIGHTS AND COUNTER-TERRORISM POLICIES?
IG: Every country is moved by its own national security interests. And the effort to safeguard national interests actually becomes a clash of moral high ground. It is a contest between the need to counter terrorism, and the moral and legal covenants which require us that laws and principles should be applied without discrimination.
In the US/Canada, and some European countries We hear a lot of domestic debate on the need for rule of law, access to justice, democratic values but their prism for others is selective, and while preserving their national interests, they wouldn’t apply human rights yardstick on themselves: They are driven more by the Realpolitik rather than by concern for the international humanitarian law.
Scrutiny of developing countries is stringent. For developing countries good learning experience, they can try to create their own security regimes which address the issues of terrorism but do not necessarily and permanently violate the rights of the majority.
A big contradiction indeed; Donor money invested in transitional justice , alternative justice but countries such as the US themselves move swiftly to change the law or use foreign territories such as Guantanamo Bay or Abu Ghraib or Bagram in Afghanistan to settle their scores with alleged terrorists.
Another big contradiction in the conduct of the ICRC; when its attention is drawn to the fault lines being created by geo-politics or breach of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) by big countries, its officials privately say: “let us focus only on humanitarian causes.”
GNRD: WHAT EFFECTIVE SAFEGUARD MECHANISMS CAN BE USED TO HOLD STATES ACCOUNTABLE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES?
IG: Any legislation – whether international or national against socio-political phenomenon such as terrorism or religious extremism must be time-barred.
Sun-set clauses must be part of such legislative measures because you cannot allow exceptions to become permanent hurdles in the way of human rights.
Citizens’ activism and community mobilization for collective legal action against excesses/violations by the state are means to check the legislative passed by the state. Recent example is the lifting of moratorium on the death penalty in Pakistan, though the Parliament passed it, but, it was challenged by the Judiciary.
GNRD: WHAT IS THE ROLE OF CIVIL SOCIETY IN HOLDING STATES AND NON-STATE ACTORS ACCOUNTABLE?
IG: The Civil Society remains critical to human rights. In many countries they are not welcome, viewed with suspicion but lot of work that continues to happen on the Rights front does result from the civil society’s relentless focus on fundamental rights and liberties.
The civil society of course has no political power to enforce laws or directly pressure state or non-state actors, but they remain instrumental in crafting the narrative through the media and the civil society networks in and outside the country; message multiplication, campaigning for awareness as much as possible.
For example in Pakistan, the civil society led a movement for the “Restoration of Judiciary” (2007), which was later joined by lawyers, political parties, and a large segment of media, and finally paved way for the restoration of the judiciary after two years of relentless movement under the governments of President Musharraf and President Zardari from March 2007 to April 2009.
As we went along the asymmetrical war, we were trained to fight enemy, but now had to fight the non-conventional war, individual groups.
GNRD: DO YOU BELIEVE THAT WE HAVE REASONS (AND EMOTIONS) TO BE OPTIMISTIC IN THE FUTURE OR NOT?
IG: We must stay optimistic. It’s a case of the glass being half full or half empty.
There are two big reasons, firstly in March 2015; the Human Rights Council resolution on the right to privacy in the digital age underscores the expanding critical voice of the civil society. Imagine the number of special rapporteurs, and themes being dealt by the UN and the Human Rights Council, two decades ago and today. As many as ten country mandates and 32 thematic areas, which are a source of constant watch, study, awareness, and public scrutiny of individual states and non-state actors. We at least a have counter-narrative resonating at forums such as these. Secondly, the Obama Summit on Combating Violent Extremists in February 2015 was a major sign of shaping of policy, resulting from the buildup of pressure of civil society.
Of course, as civil society, we don’t have the military muscle and the political-economic power to match the brute side of geo-politics but as members of the civil society and intelligentsia, we must keep up the challenge to violation of human rights and to the international humanitarian law.