Publication: ‘What role for IHL and HRL in the fight against terrorist networks?’ in Research Handbook on Human Rights and Humanitarian Law

A chapter co-authored by Gloria Gaggioli and Ilya Sobol titled ‘What role for IHL and HRL in the fight against terrorist networks?’ is published in Research Handbook on Human Rights and Humanitarian Law.

See part of the introduction below:

Like Janus, the fight against terrorism has two faces. One resembles a war – waged either globally against alleged transnational terrorist networks or in different territorial contexts against armed groups labelled as terrorist. The other is rooted in law enforcement and aims at preventing and punishing terrorism or (violent) extremism. In both cases, expansive counter-terrorism practices have challenged the rules of both international humanitarian law (IHL) and international human rights law (IHRL) but in a somewhat opposing manner. In war-like contexts, the trend has been to interpret and apply international humanitarian law in overly expansive ways that allow broadening States’ operational capabilities as supposedly demanded by the new threats that cannot be addressed otherwise. This is especially the case when the terrorist threat is not internal but international and materializes in distant lands. In such cases, the role of IHL has been magnified and applied to situations whose classification as an armed conflict is doubtful or against terrorist networks that do not qualify as organized armed groups for the purpose of IHL. Targeting practices against alleged terrorists are equally expansive and question our theoretical understanding of what membership in an organized armed group is or should be. In parallel, counter-terrorism practices in the realm of law enforcement have proliferated and diversified. In contradistinction with States’ interpretations and applications of IHL, the standards of human rights law are not expanded, but minimized, circumvented or ignored, all in the name of undefined national security claims. The objective of this chapter is to reflect on these trends and address some of these practices, assessing the respective roles of IHL and IHRL in the fight against terrorist networks. Section 2 is dedicated to IHL and addresses two issues central to the debate on armed conflicts involving armed groups engaging in terrorist violence: (1) (over)classification of such conflicts, and (2) expansive targeting practices of members of such groups. Section 3 focuses on four groups of policies, both new and old, sought to address the threat of terrorism domestically: (1) responses to fighters returning from conflict zones, (2) securitization of citizenship for counter-terrorism purposes, (3) the emergence of ‘violent extremism’ as a policy subject and CVE as a solution to it, and (4) the continuing minimization of non-refoulement guarantees in the name of security maximization.