Article by Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms While Countering Terrorism. Just Security.
July 10, 2020.
This week’s first-ever ”Virtual Counter-Terrorism Week” (CT Week) at the United Nations is framed as revolving around the pandemic. Yet nowhere on the agenda is there discussion of the misuse and appropriation of the coronavirus to suppress rights, to leverage greater executive power, to limit democratic and independent oversight, and to engage the coercive power of the police and security sector. Allowing States to define terrorism exclusively on their own terms encourages the proliferation of national legislation that, for example, includes acts protected by international law such as speech and assembly as terrorism or security threats. That is now exacerbated and accelerated by the use of the pandemic as a basis for new security legislation in multiple states. In essence, we face an epidemic of exceptional law and practice under the cover of the coronavirus.
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