OUR MISSION
Human Rights First builds respect for human rights and the rule of law to help ensure the dignity to which everyone is entitled and to stem intolerance, tyranny, and violence. More »
Human Rights First builds respect for human rights and the rule of law to help ensure the dignity to which everyone is entitled and to stem intolerance, tyranny, and violence. More »
About the Law & Security Program
The Law and Security program works to bring government counterterrorism and related national security efforts into compliance with international humanitarian law (laws of armed conflict) and human rights law. Our goal is to advance a rights-respecting response and approach to national security threats. Specifically, we work on the following issues:
- Interrogation and Detainee Treatment: We work to ensure a single standard of humane treatment by the United States for all terrorist suspects and armed conflict detainees and ensure U.S. adherence to international treaty obligations prohibiting torture and ill-treatment. We work with retired military leaders and former interrogators to advocate for humane and fair treatment of terror suspects.
- Detention: We work to ensure swift, full and fair detention hearings for security detainees, both inside and outside the context of armed conflict and in conformity with the requirements of international humanitarian and human rights law. We focus on detentions at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at Bagram, Afghanistan. We are also engaged in policy work against administrative detention in, and the practice of extraordinary rendition by, the United States.
- Fair trials for terrorism suspects: We closely monitor and advocate against the use of the military commissions in Guantanamo and in favor of the use of federal criminal courts for trying terrorism suspects.
- Accountability: Through research and policy advocacy, we work to end impunity for human rights abuses committed by policy makers and other government actors as well as by private security and other military contractors fielded abroad.
- Right to remedy: Since September 11, 2001, the U.S. government has invoked several strategies to thwart the judicial claims of individuals who have been subjected to arbitrary detention and abuse. One such strategy, the state secrets privilege, results in the dismissal of claims on the simple assertion of the government that state secrets are implicated. We advocate legislation that would require courts to independently examine the information for which the government asserts a privilege and decide whether disclosure of the information would pose an unreasonable risk to national security.
- In the Courts: We have spearheaded Human Rights First's participation in amicus briefs in prominent post-9/11 cases including Rasul v. Bush, Boumediene v. Bush, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, Padilla v. Hanft, and Al-Marri v. Wright as well as in cases involving private security contractors. Along with the ACLU, Human Rights First was co-counsel in In Re. Iraq and Afghanistan Detainee Litigation—a lawsuit against U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on behalf of Iraqi and Afghan civilians who were tortured and abused while in U.S. custody.