| SPOTLIGHT |
The United Nations’ special rapporteur on human rights has called for fundamental changes to the UK’s Prevent strategy, which is designed to counter extremism.
In a report to the UN Human Rights Council, Maina Kiai, former chair of Kenya’s National Human Rights Commission, said the Prevent strategy had a “focus on countering non-violent extremism without a narrow and explicit definition, at the expense of basic human rights and fundamental freedoms.”
Mr Kiai said he “sympathises with the need to combat the scourge of terrorism in a comprehensive and forceful manner…however, this should not be done in disregard of fundamental freedoms”.
During his mission in the UK “the feedback he received from civil society on the impact of the Prevent strategy on the enjoyment of these freedoms was overwhelmingly negative” and that the strategy was being applied “in a way that translated simply into crude racial, ideological, cultural and religious profiling, with concomitant effects on the right to freedom of association of some groups”.
He said the guidance offered to schools on how to apply the Prevent duty provides that “specified authorities are expected to assess the risk of children being drawn into terrorism, including support for extremist ideas that are part of terrorist ideology” and that those authorities “need to demonstrate that they are protecting children and young people from being drawn into terrorism by having robust safeguarding policies in place to identify children at risk, and intervening as appropriate”.
The report said: “The special rapporteur believes that such unclear guidelines give excessive discretion to decision makers, which subsequently makes the overall application of Prevent unpredictable and potentially arbitrary, hence rendering it inconsistent with the principle of the rule of law.”
Mr Kiai concluded there was “no doubt that the United Kingdom takes its role as one of the global leaders in human rights seriously” but he noted with concern “that a series of separate measures by the Government, some implemented and others proposed, have negatively impacted the exercise of the rights to freedom of association and freedom of peaceful assembly and, in general, are resulting in the closing of space for civil society.
“In many instances, these moves have been subtle and gradual, but they are as unmistakable as they are alarming.”
He called for an independent review of the Prevent strategy to determine its impact upon the enjoyment of fundamental freedoms, scrapping of the proposed Counter-Extremism and Safeguarding Bill and amending the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 to “bring it into compliance with international human rights norms and standards governing the right to privacy, the right to freedom of opinion and expression, the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and the right to freedom of association”.
