UN expert: States should ensure accountability, transparency and access to sites of secret detention
The Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, presented her Follow-up report on the Joint Study (2010) on Global Practices in Relation to Secret Detention in the Context of Countering Terrorism at the Human Rights Council. Ms. Ní Aoláin stressed the absolute impermissibility of secret detention, rendition, disappearances and arbitrary detention, as contrary to the rule of law and the vision of human rights.
The report assessed 20 years of violence, separation, detention and trauma of hundred of persons detained as the result of the “war on terror”. The UN expert highlighted the fact that States failed to implement recommendations from a 2010 joint study, produced by four Special Procedures Mandates on global practices related to secret detention in the context of countering terrorism. This failure led to tragic consequences for individuals, who were tortured, arbitrarily detained, and deprived of their fundamental rights. Ms. Ní Aoláin drew a direct link between this lack of action and the ongoing practices of mass arbitrary detention and torture. She emphasised the urgency of independent and full access to these sites of detention.
The UN expert addressed the detention site at Guantanamo Bay, and expressed her concern about the normalisation of secret detention in some countries, especially in northeast Syria and Xinjiang region in China, where people suffer from ill-treatment and torture. Ms. Ní Aoláin called for the immediate closure of all the abovementioned detention facilities. She also mentioned the new challenges that have to be faced in relation to secret detention - i.a. new modalities of transfer across borders, and normalisation of illegal detention.
“The scale of human rights violations implicated by the systematic and legalized use of secret detention and torture following the events of 9/11 demand specific individual, State and inter-State accountability,” the UN expert said. “It is imperative to hold individuals, institutions, and States accountable not only to prevent impunity but also as an essential aspect of the guarantee of non-recurrence”.
The Special Rapporteur’s document presents a new set of recommendations, at the same time, it also urges the States to renew their commitment to accept and implement the recommendations of the 2010 Joint Study. The report includes not only general guidelines but also Country-Specific Recommendations (i.a. for the US, China and Syria).