A/HRC/46/36
and contingent ways in which interventions in the family manifest. She concludes that the
regulation of child welfare through the lens of extremism and radicalization is profoundly
problematic and requires greater oversight and scrutiny. She acknowledges the specific
unease at the construction of the Muslim family within counter-terrorism policy and
discourse in certain countries, including interpreting the Muslim home as a site of risk,
resulting in blame, pathology and State hyperregulation.93
25.
Counter-terrorism practice in a number of countries increasingly includes
administrative measures affecting the rights of family members. Administrative control
measures include assignment of residence, restrictions on the right to leave the home,
passport seizures, geographical restraints on movement, limitations on visits to houses of
worship, bans on being in the vicinity of certain persons or bans on contact. They can also
have consequences for the maintenance of family life, including with family members living
abroad. Administrative actions are frequently based on broad and vague criteria, typically
rely on secret information and are generally imposed on persons who have not been charged
or tried with a crime. Meaningful remedies are limited, and judicial oversight when it is
provided is frequently attenuated. 94 While those measures target specific individuals and
affect their rights, their coterminous impact on the rights of family members has been
underappreciated. Not only do they often limit the movement and association rights of
children, spouses and other adults in the household, but they also affect the capacity of all
family members to access other rights, e.g., education, religious exercise, work, health, and
other social entitlements.
26.
The Special Rapporteur identifies the “familialization of terrorism” in contemporary
State practice. 95 Specifically, the construction of contemporary motherhood for certain
mothers and certain communities is being shaped by counter-terrorism and preventing and
countering extremism law and practice.96 She sees the ascendency of discourses and practices
placing requirements on the “mother”, partner and wife in the context of preventing
extremism and terrorism to operate in highly constrained, patriarchal and rights-denying
ways. Notably, mothers who “fail” to appropriately raise their children are perceived as
particularly blameworthy when their children engage in terrorist acts. The “good mother” is
one who partners with the security State in preventing and countering violent extremism
programmes,97 even as such programmes may stigmatize, marginalize and make her a frontline target within her own political context. Programmes that target Muslim mothers to
address violence in their families often rely on and perpetuate a series of harmful stereotypes,
burdening women as mothers in unique and highly retrogressive ways. As noted in previous
country reports, 98 the mothers of individuals who have committed terrorist attacks are
subjected to intersecting intrusions by the State, violating not only the right to nondiscrimination and privacy but also fundamentally disrupting the right to family life for
extended periods. Mothers and wives are invariably conflated with the violent acts of their
children or husbands. Their homes are often the target of intrusive and violent State searches;
they frequently become the objects of ongoing surveillance and harassment; they are rarely
given the decency of recognition that they too have been the object of suffering and loss; and
they must manage complex and challenging familial, communal and societal expectations.
27.
The Special Rapporteur is particularly concerned about retrogressive and highly
patriarchal views of the family form and function deployed in the context of counterterrorism and security measures as enforcement of gender ideologies. 99 She sees a particular
confluence of the masculinities that dominate the security sector (and national security
93
Conversely, to a large extent, right-wing violent extremism and terrorism are largely absent in such
regulatory practices and generally not the object of familial regulation.
94 See A/HRC/40/52/Add.4.
95 She is indebted to Fatima Ahdash for the use of this term.
96 Gargi Bhattacharyya, Dangerous Brown Men: Exploiting Sex, Violence and Feminism in the “War on
Terror” (Zed Books, 2013).
97 Katherine Brown, “The promise and perils of women’s participation in UK mosques: the impact of
securitisation agendas on identity, gender and community”, The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations.
98 See A/HRC/40/52/Add.5.
99 A/HRC/43/46/Add.1, para. 21.
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