CGCC’s work emphasizes the inherent linkages among respect for human rights, good governance, and effectively combating terrorism and aims to address the tensions that sometimes emerge among these concepts in practice. CGCC has provided analysis and recommendations for better integrating human rights considerations into the UN counterterrorism program, including to the Security Council’s sanctions regime. CGCC also conducts human rights–focused trainings as part of its capacity-building work in different regions around the world. For example, in 2011, CGCC piloted a four-day training seminar in Uganda on human rights–compliant interrogation techniques. In 2012, CGCC and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark cohost a conference that focused on various human rights issues, identifying guidance to ensure those standards are upheld, as part of ongoing efforts to build capabilities to address counterterrorism and human rights issues in third countries.
CGCC hosted this seminar in cooperation with the Directorate for External Relations of the European Commission, focused on raising awareness of the United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy, particularly its human rights elements, and how the European Union’s work on counterterrorism while promoting and protecting human rights are compatible with the...
CGCC and Human Rights First cosponsored this meeting at the law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer and Feld, and it was the first in a series of workshops and briefings that CGCC planned to hold over the year on counterterrorism and human rights. The primary objective of the project was...
Professor Robert K. Goldman of American University’s Washington College of Law moderated a panel discussion on human rights and the United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy with Santiago Cantón of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Steve Crawshaw of Human Rights Watch, Ngonlardje Mbaidjol from the UN Office of the High...
Organized by the Stimson Center Security for a New Century project and CGCC, Martin Scheinin, the UN Special Rapporteur focusing on counterterrorism and human rights, presented a briefing on the need for U.S. counterterrorism efforts to comply with its obligations under international law. The briefing was based on his 2007...
Thomas Sanderson, Deputy Director of the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, led a panel discussion on the effectiveness and human rights implications of the UN al-Qaida and Taliban sanctions regime. Panelists were Richard Barrett, Coordinator of the UN Al-Qaida and Taliban Analytical Support and...
Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute hosted a discussion of two new publications from CGCC: “Handbook on Human Rights Compliance While Countering Terrorism” by Alex Conte and “Human Rights and the Implementation of the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy: Hopes and Challenges” by Eric Rosand, Alistair Millar, and Jason Ipe. Participants...
This report addresses the challenge of ensuring that the human rights–based approach to combating terrorism enshrined in the United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy is mainstreamed through the relevant UN and regional bodies and programs and at the national level. It provides specific recommendations on what the United Nations, region and...
This handbook provides practical guidance to decision-makers on what human rights compliance means and how it is to be achieved in the context of counterterrorism law and practice....
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