A/HRC/46/36 male head of household, his uncertain status or deportation can render the entire family as the object of suspicion and surveillance. The loss of a family member, particularly in households with highly stratified gender roles, may result in loss of income or, in countries with robust welfare infrastructure, loss of entitlement to assistance. Removal of a family member to another jurisdiction undermines parent-child relationships and, as recognized in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, limits children’s capabilities and opportunities in multiple ways. The fact that citizenship stripping can control and define on security grounds who may legally benefit from family membership reveals the deep connection being forged between family regulation and security policy. The removal of citizenship or immigration status from a family member based on assumptions or claims of radicalization, extremism or engagement in or support of terrorism and/or the failure to preserve family units affect the fundamental rights of all its members. The lack of an internationally agreed definition of either radicalization or extremism underscores the accompanying legal uncertainty and potential for abuse. 24. The Special Rapporteur highlights the particular impact of removal, wardship and custody orders and the role of family courts being shaped by the dubious and insidious infiltration of security thinking in ways that affect the most fundamental of rights for individuals and the family unit.85 The infiltration of radicalization language and policy into family administration and family courts enables a permissive interaction between family law and counter-terrorism regulation,86 which removes terrorism from the realm of a problem of political violence and reframes it as a family problem, to be solved primarily by women, as mothers, daughters or wives. The Special Rapporteur has observed the increased use of custody, wardship and State care orders to remove children from mothers because of “radicalization”87 and notes that there appears to be a difference in judicial standards applied to men and to differently constituted family structures, resulting in a particular maternal penalty being applied to women for perceived or actual “extremism”. The tools in such cases involve making children wards of a court or placing children in foster care under permanent or interim care orders (or equivalent) on the basis of parents’ radicalization or extremism. The upsurge in family law engagement has followed from interventions where parents had planned to travel to designated conflict zones or where children were demonstrating signs of radicalization. 88 The proceedings often involve exceptional national security elements, including closed material proceedings and the use of intelligence evidence, and limit the typical challenges that individuals might make when their most fundamental rights are being adjudicated.89 The Special Rapporteur reiterates her concern about the use of “experts” on determining radicalization and extremism in extremism proceedings in general and in family law proceedings in particular. 90 She entirely accepts the importance of safeguarding and ensuring the best interests of the child from physical and psychological harms. 91 She notes that the best interests test can be skewed by undue reliance on the (little) information that security services may provide in such proceedings. She expresses deep concern in that regard, given the lack of scientific consensus on what constitutes radicalization, 92 the acknowledged absence of cultural and religious sensitivity in determining “good” parenting through the lens of culturally dominant practices, e.g., preferences for secularity or what is considered acceptable religious practices through a Judeo-Christian lens, the disciplining of certain “suspect” groups to advance other social and political agendas and the historically specific 85 See, e.g., www.judiciary.uk/publications/radicalisation-cases-in-the-family-courts/. See A/64/211; and A/HRC/WGAD/2020/33. 87 See Fatima Ahdash, “The interaction between family law and counter-terrorism: a critical examination of the radicalisation cases in the family courts”, Child and Family Law Quarterly. 88 Rachel Taylor, “Religion as harm? Radicalisation, extremism and child protection” Child and Family Law Quarterly (2018). 89 Arguments are made that such family proceedings are “better” in the circumstances than criminal law, because they focus on “protection” and the child. That position underestimates the costs to family law systems from being securitized and the dangers of creating exceptional legal spaces for some families (and not others) under the rubric of lawful family regulation. 90 See A/HRC/43/46/Add.1. 91 Rozemarjin van Spaendonck, “To school or to Syria? The foreign fighter phenomenon from a children’s rights perspective” Utrecht Law Review. 92 See A/HRC/43/46. 86 13