ARTICLE 19 congratulates you on your appointment as the new Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights while countering terrorism. We also want to thank Professor Ní Aoláin for her outstanding work over the past six years. She leaves us with an incredible body of work, and we hope to build further on this exceptional legacy.
Human rights belong at the heart of all counter-terrorism efforts, or these efforts risk exacerbating the very conditions conducive to terrorism or becoming sources of rights violations themselves. So, we warmly welcome the vision and priorities as set out in your report.
ARTICLE 19 echoes in particular four areas:
First, your intention to continue highlighting the impact of counter-terrorism measures on civic space and civil society. The Global Study on the impact of counter-terrorism on civil society and civic space by the former Special Rapporteur demonstrated how civil society experiences complex and compounding misuse of counter-terrorism measures and contains excellent recommendations to mitigate those impacts. This issue requires further urgent attention.
Second, it is crucial that terrorist narratives online and offline are addressed in strict compliance with existing human rights standards.
Third, the use of technologies, new or existing, as part of countering terrorism, requires your further attention. These technologies include the use of covert digital surveillance technology to spy on civil society actors; the deployment of various artificial intelligence technologies, including facial and emotion recognition technologies, in public and private spheres; the use of internet shutdowns, or blocking or filtering of websites under the guise of protecting national security, only to name a few. States need to ensure that, in the conceptualisation, design, development, use, governance, sale, trade, and transfer of digital technologies, actors strictly comply with key human rights such as freedom of expression and information, freedom of association and assembly, rights to privacy and data protection, rights to equality and non-discrimination. In addition, the vital principles of transparency, inclusion, accountability, effective remedy, and participation must apply across the lifecycle of technologies, with strong human rights protections in place, including through effective human rights impact assessments. Regarding privately-developed surveillance tools, ARTICLE 19 calls for an immediate moratorium on the export, sale, transfer, use or servicing of these tools until a human rights’ compliant safeguarding regime is in place, and refer to the excellent position paper by the former Special Rapporteur on human rights-compliant global regulation of the spyware trade.
Finally, we wish to see human rights genuinely mainstreamed throughout the UN counter-terrorism architecture, and to ensure meaningful multi-stakeholder engagement in decision-making.