Summary

In this report, the Special Rapporteur addresses the human rights challenge of states of emergency in the context of countering terrorism. In particular, she identifies new post-9/11 emergency practices and their adverse effects. Emergencies are not a new phenomenon for States. Human rights law enables States to limit the full exercise of derogable human rights when governments are faced with exceptional challenges requiring proportionate and necessary restrictions to human rights.

However, emergency powers are a limited device. States’ use of emergency and exceptional national security measures should provide a positive basis by which to return to the full protection of human rights within a reasonable time frame. States of emergency have long been correlated with extensive and wide-ranging human rights violations.

The Special Rapporteur details the relationship between entrenched emergency powers and sustained human rights violations and affirms that States are not well served by the institutionalization of states of emergency. She sets out guidelines and good practice that she encourages governments to adopt while countering terrorism so as to systematically address the pernicious problem of permanent emergencies.

The Special Rapporteur also offers her views on international human rights supervision mechanisms and encourages a firmer and more robust approach in judicial and regulatory oversight. She affirms that the wider global challenge of addressing the conditions conducive to terrorism and violent extremism will be advanced if the practices of permanent and de facto emergencies are dealt with unflinchingly. States have much to gain by dismantling their permanent and de facto emergency structures, as does the rule of law, broadly defined.