Former UN Special Rapporteur Discusses Global Challenges to Human Rights
The Orville H. Schell Jr. Center for International Human Rights4 welcomed Professor Fionnuala D. Ní Aoláin to the Human Rights Workshop5 on Jan. 30 to deliver a talk, “The Rise of Counterterrorism and the Demise of Human Rights.” Ní Aoláin is the University Regents Professor, holder of the Robina Chair in Law, Public Policy, and Society, and faculty director of the Human Rights Center at the University of Minnesota Law School. She is also a professor of law at the Queen's University of Belfast School of Law. She served as the United Nations special rapporteur on counterterrorism from 2017 to 2023. In 2024, she was appointed honorary king's counsel by King Charles of England.
In her talk, Ní Aoláin explored the legacy of the global war on terror and its impact on human rights. She opened the talk with a description of the impact of Sept. 11 on counterterrorism, noting how it recalibrated international consensus on the unacceptability of terrorism. She said that while states agree that terrorism is bad, there is no universally accepted definition of terrorism. This leaves individual countries with broad discretion to address terrorism as they see fit. She said this “loose space” has created significant challenges for the protection of human rights, especially as counterterrorism measures evolve from overt crackdowns to more subtle forms of prevention and regulation.
Ní Aoláin emphasized that although the language of the “war on terror” may have faded from public discourse, its effects continue to reverberate, shaping counterterrorism practices and legal frameworks around the world. She said that the normative and institutional expansion of counterterrorism laws has undermined the integrity of human rights protections and eroded the capacity of civil society to function effectively.
The talk highlighted the role of international institutions like the United Nations Security Council in shaping counterterrorism policy. Ní Aoláin discussed the impact of Security Council Resolution 1373, which requires states to implement prescriptive counterterrorism legislation and report to the U.N. She said that this is an unusually strong, “hard law” measure and, while it has a huge impact on states’ policies around terrorism, it fails to define what terrorism itself is. Ní Aoláin then argued that this ambiguity allows states to claim broad powers in the name of counterterrorism while avoiding accountability for potential human rights abuses.
Ní Aoláin also discussed the increasing use of “soft law” in counterterrorism, citing examples like recommendations from intergovernmental organization Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and the Madrid Memorandum of Global Counterterrorism Forum. While these measures may appear less formal, they have significant implications for states’ legal systems, she said. For example, the economic incentives created by the FATF can profoundly increase counterterrorism legislation. She explained that Saudi Arabia and Russia often fund and drive the development of soft law around counterterrorism, and elements of these soft law ideas have even been enshrined in Security Council resolutions and transformed into hard law.
The talk concluded with a discussion of how counterterrorism ideas are instrumentalized by governments to target and undermine civil society. Ní Aoláin highlighted examples including Israel’s targeting of Palestinian civil society organizations in the name of counterterrorism and the Serbian government’s widespread use of surveillance technologies like Pegasus spyware. These tools, she argued, are disproportionately used against women human rights activists and marginalized groups, exacerbating vulnerabilities within civil society.
Ní Aoláin also noted how counterterrorism measures can also invade administrative law and hobble the operating capacity of civil society organizations. Too often, she said, counterterrorism and prevention become an opportunity for states to encroach on the privacy and other human and civil rights of both their own citizens and non-citizens.
