On 15 June 2023, the Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR) in cooperation with Human Rights Watch (HRW), the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS), and the Civil Society Coalition on Human Rights and Counter-Terrorism held an event in New York to discuss the “Impact of Counter-Terrorism Policies on Human Rights in the Middle East and North Africa” (MENA). You can watch the video on GCHR’s YouTube channel here.

Khalid Ibrahim, Executive Director of GCHR, moderated the panel discussion. He opened by saying, “Being a human rights defender, journalist, or even a citizen expressing their opinions or promoting human rights in the MENA region is increasingly becoming a very risky business.  Governments and authorities across the MENA region have immense resources and tools including the judiciary itself to fully intimidate human rights defenders and steer them away from their advocacy and protecting human rights. States across the MENA region use counter–terrorismas apretext to silence human rights defenders and to import the most sophisticated surveillance, drones and other equipment to monitor online activism.”

He added, “Also, Counter-Terrorism policies and laws adopted by governments of the Middle East and North Africa region have been used extensively in ways that undermine the rule of law and restrict basic rights and freedoms. Under the pretext of protecting national security and fighting terrorism, these governments have directly targeted civil society. Human rights defenders, including women, as well as religious groups, journalists, political opponents, and others, have been arbitrarily arrested and detained, tortured, and sentenced to prison on fabricated charges. They have faced travel bans, denial of their rights to free expression, and reprisals for their work, including with the United Nations and other international organisations.”

Ibrahim continued, “There’s no doubt that several governments in the west are still giving oppressive governments in the MENA region unconditional support, which is one of the main reasons why our colleagues are still in prison, in addition to the fact that companies in democracies are still providing these governments with surveillance technologies that facilitate human rights violations against human rights defenders and put online activism at risk.”

NSO Group says it builds Pegasus spyware solely for governments to use in counterterrorism and law enforcement work but many of my colleagues were victims of Pegasus spyware. Ibrahim mentioned the case of GCHR Board member Ahmed Mansoor, who was arrested on 20 March 2017, tortured and sentenced to 10 years in prison. He is still in solitary confinement since his arrest. Ahmed was the first victim of Pegasus spyware back in 2015. “He, his family, friends and we his colleagues have paid a heavy price for the use of surveillance technology against him. We are all still in pain,” said Ibrahim.

No proper research has been conducted to assess the psychological damage that is happening to citizens and activists due to the adoption of the counter-terrorism policies by governments. Ibrahim said, “You are signaled out in the airport, denied getting a US visa if you are from certain countries such as Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Iran, or Syria, not allowed to send money to your family, and excluded as defenders from many opportunities for funding or research.”

Ibrahim continued, “We don’t have any local remedy and as such rely mainly on international advocacy. The MENA region is marked by dictatorships for a very long time. We are trying our best to change that through our advocacy efforts here and in other capitals such Geneva and Brussels.”

He concluded, “We managed to have a lot of success despite the repressive nature of the governments in the MENA region. Peaceful change is coming but it will take a long time through our work and the work of others such as the CSO Coalition.” He mentioned as an example, that members of the coalition will be heavily involved in the 8th review of the Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy, and the development of UN Guiding Principles on Countering the Use of New and Emerging Technologies for Terrorist Purposes. Human rights protections in these documents are critical, as member states use these tools to drive their counter-terrorism efforts, including their support to other member states.  

The first speaker, Dr. Hala Al-Dosari, a Saudi woman human rights defender and gender scholar, said that there are similarities across the MENA region with how counter-terrorism laws are implemented. The Counter-Terrorism Law in Saudi Arabia aims to prevent uprisings similar to those in other countries that occurred in 2011. 

Dr. Al-Dosari added, “New mechanisms have been established to protect the authority of the State, such as the Presidency of the State Security, which operates above the law.” They are able to surveil anybody whether inside the country or abroad, and target people exercising their rights to free speech, especially on Twitter. The first person to be sentenced under the Counter-Terrorism Law was the famous lawyer Walid Abu Al-Khair in 2014.” Dr. Al-Dosari noted that Salma Al-Shehab was arrested and sentenced in 2022 to 27 years (reduced from 34 years) in prison for her online support for women activists on Twitter. Likewise, Nourah Al-Qahtani has been sentenced to 45 in prison due to her online activities. 

Neil Hicks of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS) said, “The post-9/11 global prioritisation of the need to counter terrorism has been a major factor in the worsening human rights crisis that is now gripping the MENA region.” He added, “Terrorism and the international struggle against it would have an outsized influence on human rights conditions everywhere.” He listed five harmful trends: equating human rights defenders to terrorists, the securitisation and militarisation of counter-terrorism responses, the weakening of state-to-state peer pressure, the proliferation of exceptional legislation to counter terrorism, and the negative influence of the United States, which led the “War on Terror.” 

Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, a human rights lawyer, said, “There are no shortage of issues that have come up with the way the US has conducted counter-terrorism efforts over the past two decades.” This includes the violations related to Guantanamo Bay prison and other offshore sites, and targeting killings abroad. There are two categories of policies that had an indirect detrimental effect on human rights defenders. He said, “Countries engaged in their own repression point to the US violations of human rights,” such as those committed in Guantanamo. Second, US sanctions and visa rules have prevented human rights defenders from countries such as Syria or Iran from visiting the US to engage with the UN in their efforts to shine light on human rights violations in their home countries.

Solafa Magdy, an Egyptian journalist and woman human rights defender, recounted her experience being imprisoned in inhuman conditions from November 2019 until April 2021, after being accused of “supporting terrorism”. Magdy still has charges against her. She spoke of how counter-terrorism measures are used to infringe human rights in Egypt by making it off limits to speak about national security and foreign policy. She said there are thousands of political prisoners including journalists and women in Egypt’s 80 prisons. She said, “By focusing on counter terrorism the government can divert attention from economic inequality, corruption and social injustice.”

Letta Tayler of Human Rights Watch (HRW) said women are being held in prison in Egypt who are family members of terrorism suspects in order to draw them out of hiding, or are women and girls who are actually victims of terrorist groups. Tunisia’s President has also used “despicable powers to arrest high-profile critics.” Tayler lauded the efforts of CSOs attending the UN Counter-Terrorism Week, where some of the countries mentioned above have representatives leading efforts at the UN. She noted the failure of the UN to hold member states to account and allow countries such as Egypt and the United Arab Emirates to hold events such as the COP27 and COP28. She called on the UN to “stop rewarding bad behaviour” and to condition US funding on human rights progress.

The discussion was followed by a lively question and answer session between speakers and the audience. The event was attended by many state members and representatives from UN mechanisms and CSOs. 

UN Counter-Terrorism Week

On 20 June, Khalid Ibrahim attended an event on Inclusive Civil-Society Engagement to Support Rights-based Counterterrorism Efforts at the United Nations: A Vision Forward. It was organised by the Global Center on Cooperative Security (Global Center), the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), and the governments of Costa Rica, Denmark and the Kingdom of the Netherlands as part of a week of events. This event provided an occasion for UN, civil society, and government representatives to discuss opportunities, challenges, and practical recommendations to achieve meaningful, inclusive, and safe civil society engagement in all UN counterterrorism efforts and across all pillars of the Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy. 

At the event, Ibrahim said, “The UN needs to do something serious about the use of reprisals to target civil society. We also need practical actions to make it accessible for civil society to engage in the UN. This is often prevented by things like visas.” Watch the event here.

The UN Counter-Terrorism Week is a biennial gathering of Member States and international counter-terrorism partners that took place from 19 to 23 June 2023 at the UN Headquarters in New York. 

Ibrahim also attended an event where the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights & Counter-Terrorism Fionnuala Ní Aoláin received  an award by the CSO Coalition on Human Rights and Counterterrorism for her exceptional work over the past six years in carrying out her mandate. She launched the Global Study on the Impact of Counter-Terrorism on Civil Society & Civic Space  at another event during the week.