Kent Law School Senior Lecturer Dr Gavin Sullivan was among a select group of expert panellists invited to discuss the Office of the Ombudsperson, a role created 10 years ago by the UN Security Council with a remit to conduct independent reviews of controversial terrorist listings.<\/p>\n
The online discussion, hosted jointly by the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism in The Hague (ICCT), the Office of the Ombudsperson to the UN Security Council ISIL (Da’esh) and Al-Qaida Sanctions Committee, and the\u00a0 Asser Institute Centre for International and European Law, was livestreamed yesterday to international lawyers and policy practitioners from the UN and global security field.<\/p>\n
Dr Sullivan examined the political and legal conflicts underpinning the UN\u2019s counter-terrorism listing regime and Office of the Ombudsperson for his book The Law of the List\u00a0<\/a><\/em>(Cambridge University Press, 2020). His research shows how the UN listing and delisting process is both far-reaching in its effects and remains deeply unfair in practice.<\/p>\n Dr Sullivan said: \u2018The list claims to be temporary and preventative but it targets people indefinitely. One of my clients was recently delisted after being \u2018preventatively\u2019 targeted by the Security Council in this way for more than 15 years. That\u2019s 15 years where you are unable to work or travel and it\u2019s a criminal offence for anyone to give you any money. The Ombudsperson purports to provide listed persons with an effective review, but the decision to put people on the list is never subjected to real scrutiny.\u00a0\u00a0Despite the Ombudsperson\u2019s procedural innovations, this UN sanctions list continues to target people on the basis of secret intelligence they cannot see or properly defend themselves against.\u2019<\/p>\n Other panellists for the webinar (available to watch again online) included\u00a0Daniel Kipfer Fasciati (the current UN Ombudsperson), Kimberly Prost (Ombudsperson 2010 \u2013 2015), Catherine Marchi-Uhel (UN Ombudsperson, 2015 \u2013 2017) and Devika Hovell (LSE).<\/p>\n