A/HRC/46/36 promotion of human rights.74 The family can function as an extraordinarily meaningful site for the realization of individual rights. However, it can also function as a site of exclusion for particular types of families, a site of gender-based discrimination that places women’s rights secondary to men’s or a site of violence, secrecy and repression. Historically, for example, certain rights violations, particularly of those of women and children, such as domestic violence and violence against women, were seen as outside of the scope of public regulation and critiqued precisely because of their location within the privacy of the home and the family.75 That remains true in many places. Still, in diverse contexts, various exclusions and hierarchies of families based on their perceived structure or origin persist, such as those that are perceived as male-headed, heterosexual or, in some contexts, Western or secular. That leaves some families without equal recourse and status under the law and increasingly vulnerable to State intervention in the name of countering terrorism and produces a range of stigmas for families that ultimately lead to compounding harms and rights violations. The implications for the family – both as a unit and for individual family members – are considerable. 19. Today, as critiques around gender equality and non-discrimination are rightfully at the centre of discussions on the matter, the family structure in all of its diversity survives and evolves. The family, and “home life”, remains a meaningful site of respite within which to exercise the full scope of individual rights among diverse contexts and communities. It is within that living and evolving context that the Special Rapporteur aims to construct a complex picture of the impact of counter-terrorism regulation on families and family life. 20. As counter-terrorism has expanded its scope, it has insidiously crept into the regulation of family life, family law and the intersection between families and the State. It is the result of classic counter-terrorism regulation, where both the family and individual family members are the target of the State’s attention. The effects are experienced directly, e.g., interrogations or counter-terrorism financing prosecutions of relatives of terrorism suspects, and indirectly, e.g., the effects on relatives of the citizenship revocation or cancellation of the welfare benefits of sanctioned individuals. In parallel, the “home” increasingly functions as a new frontier in the war against terrorism, as State counter-terrorism policy puts certain homes firmly in its counter-terrorism sights, and the shift to preventing and countering violent extremism has squarely placed the family as a site of regulation, possibility and securitization on the agenda of States. The cost to families of counter-terrorism has not always been externally obvious. The reasons are varied. Many national security policies are in areas routinely characterized by confidentiality, e.g., custody decisions. Many interventions occur at the local level, involving actors who are atypical national security stakeholders, e.g., youth workers and social workers, and whose decision-making sites and processes are diffuse, informal and opaque, making meaningful oversight challenging. 76 Precisely because of the stigma associated with being identified as an “extremist” or a “terrorist”, or as affiliated or associated with a terrorist or an extremist, there are extraordinary fears and costs for family members to make surface the harms they experience directly or indirectly from security actors and counter-terrorism policies. 21. The Special Rapporteur is particularly concerned that the very construction of the family is being shaped and distorted by counter-terrorism law and practice. 77 The effects implicate human rights beyond the usual scope of analysis regarding national security policies, requiring attention to States’ obligations, such as those not to interfere with the family life, to ensure equality of rights within the family and to protect and assist the family, 78 74 See A/HRC/31/37. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, general recommendation No. 19 (1992). 76 A/HRC/43/46, para. 32. 77 Perceptively called “Family law versions of counter-terrorism”. See Clive Walker, “Foreign terrorist fighters and UK counterterrorism law” in David Anderson, The Terrorism Acts in 2015: Report of the Independent Reviewer in the Operation of the Terrorism Act 2000 and Part 1 of the Terrorism Act 2006 (United Kingdom, 2016). 78 UN-Women, “A contemporary view of ‘family’ in international human rights law and implications for the Sustainable Development Goals” (2017). 75 11