Welcome back to a new year at the BCCLA National Security Blog.  We returned from our winter break to find a copy of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights’ new report on terrorist blacklists at our desk — highly recommended reading (and not just because our blog gets a footnote in it!).

The report, by Gavin Sullivan and Ben Hayes at the ECCHR, with a foreword by Martin Scheinin (the outgoing UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights while countering terrorism) is terrific — comprehensive, thoughtful, and timely.

In addition to tackling the 1267 Regime, the ECCHR’s report also deals with the European blacklists — products of the Security Council’s 1373 Regime, an anti-terrorism sanctions regime implemented after 9/11 to supplement the 1267 Regime.  The 1373 Regime runs in parallel to the 1267 Regime, targeting anyone accused of committing, participating in, or facilitating terrorism.

Like many other commentators on the subject, the ECCHR finds that terrorist blacklisting regimes such as the 1267 Regime breach fundamental human rights.  As the ECCHR states: “The time has come for radically rethinking the issue and for the international legal framework underpinning the blacklisting regimes to be abolished.”

Here’s a teaser, from Martin Scheinin’s introduction:

Whatever justification there was in 1999 for targeted sanctions against Taliban leaders as the de facto regime in Afghanistan, the maintenance of a permanent global terrorist list now goes beyond the powers of the Security Council.  While international terrorism remains an atrocious crime … it does not justify the exercise by the Security Council of supranational sanctioning powers over individuals and entities.