UN Special Rapporteur joins LJMU webinar on preventative detention

From Guantanamo to Xinjiang, from India to Europe, governments globally appear increasingly willing to detain citizens and migrants on suspicion rather than evidence.

Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic has raised concerns that authoritarians will use state of emergency powers to restrict freedom under the guise of protecting public health.

“Historically, when a nation augments its arsenal of emergency powers, it’s very hard to put them back in the box. So there is grave danger that the costs are going to be extremely high on fundamental rights, like the freedom of movement, speech, assembly, participation in elections,” says Fionnuala Ni Aolain, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights.

Prof Ni Aolain is taking part in a special webinar organised by LJMU with the University of Bologna to debate these issues.

Migration 'management'

The Webinar brings together international judges and leading scholars to address legal and criminological questions arising from States’ expanded use of preventive detention.

“Preventive detention has become not only a widespread counter-terrorism tool but also a weapon in migration-management,” says organiser Dr Triestino Mariniello, of the LJMU School of Law.

“Incarceration has overstepped the usual boundaries of criminal proceedings, thus escaping most of the protections recognised in that context.”

The event on Tuesday, 26 January will be chaired by Triestino and opened by Professors Timothy Nichol and Carlo Panara. It includes the following talks:

Prof. Fionnuala Ni Aolain (United Nations Special Rapporteur on Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights/University of Minnesota & Queen’s University of Belfast) – “Derogation and Right to Liberty in a State of Emergency”
Judge Prof. Paulo Pinto de Albuquerque (European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR)/Catholic University of Lisbon) – “Immigration Detention in Strasbourg Caselaw”
Judge Prof. Ksenija Turković (ECtHR/University of Zagreb) – “Right to Liberty of Migrants: ‘Dialogue’ between the European Courts”
Ms Naureen Shah (American Civil Liberties Union) – “Immigration Detention: Current Challenges in the United States
Prof. Elena Valentini (University of Bologna) – “Human Rights Implications of Immigration Detention in Italy”
Prof. Mary Bosworth (University of Oxford) – “Human Rights and Immigration Detention in the United Kingdom”