Silvia Venier

The traditional way of looking at the human rights law (HRL)—security interplay—is to assess the admissibility of derogations in particularly serious situations and of ordinary limitations of rights. Indeed, when implementing security measures, states have the primary negative obligation (NO) to refrain from impacting on human rights in a disproportionate or unnecessary manner. This article argues that, in order to more comprehensively understand the role of HRL in protecting from CBRN risks, it is crucial to look also at positive obligations (PO), as duties to take active steps to ensure respect of rights and prevent violations committed by third parties or deriving from a dangerous situation. PO stemming from HRL, which are subject to increasing academic attention, may help in clarifying states’ duties both before and during an emergency. After providing some introductory remarks, this article first briefly explores whether CBRN security measures are having a specific impact on NO, i.e. on the admissibility of derogating from HRL and limiting rights. It then focuses on PO stemming from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and applicable to risk and crisis management. It briefly discusses the main elements of the development of PO under the ECHR, and it explores the ECtHR recent jurisprudence dealing with natural and man-made disasters and counter-terrorism operations. From these cases, it distils obligations related to risk assessment and mitigation, planning and implementation of relief operations, communication with the public and investigation of alleged violations of human rights.

As part of the atrocities committed in Syria since the outbreak of the civil war, the attention of the international community has been attracted by the violence targeting a particularly vulnerable group, i.e. individuals pertaining to ‘sexual minorities’, or Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex (LGBTI). This article aims at providing an overview of the human rights abuses committed against LGBTI individuals in the territories controlled by ISIS in Syria and Iraq, and at discussing the extent to which the international community is aware of the problem and is addressing it adequately. The article then seeks to examine the legal implications triggered by the abuses committed by ISIS militants against LGBTI individuals and to discuss further avenues that might be available at the international level to ensure accountability, focusing on the challenges in applying international humanitarian law, international human rights law and international criminal law provisions to these contexts.

The link between the arrivals of refugees seeking international protection and an increase in the risk of terrorism seems to have been already established in public opinion and it has been a basis for the recent adoption of controversial measures, including the suspension of the Schengen Agreement in Europe or the so-called Muslim Ban in the United States. Against the backdrop of an alleged refugees-terrorism nexus, the purpose of this paper is to understand whether there is any degree of convergence or, conversely, divergence, between the crimes included within the “exclusion clause” under International Refugee Law (IRL) and the acts classified as “terrorist acts” under Counter-Terrorism Law (CTL), with particular reference to the European context. After some introductory remarks, the paper discusses the grounds for exclusions under IRL and European Law in section 2, while in section 3 the multiple definitions of terrorist offences under CTL are presented. Section 4 aims at discussing specific circumstances leading to the exclusion of an individual from refugee status on the basis of terrorism. Some conclusive remarks are finally proposed.

Globalisation and the development of the information society introduce new challenges but also new opportunities with respect to the mobility of people, goods, services and capital. Such mobility includes the movement of bodies (people), transactions (things that a person does either as physical actions or as captured in data), and artefacts (things associated with the individual). The importance of digital identity and identity management systems is increasing in the global and networked context. Technologies like biometrics are implemented to control the movement of people in order to prevent security threats, illegal immigration, and criminal and terror attacks.

ABSTRACT This paper posits that ethical dilemma scenarios are a useful instrument to provoke policy‐makers and other stakeholders, to including industry, in considering the privacy, ethical, social and other implications of new and emerging technologies. It describes a methodology for constructing and deconstructing such scenarios and provides four such scenarios in an orthogonal relationship with each other. The paper describes some different, but closely related scenario construction–deconstruction methodologies, which formed the basis for the methodology adopted in the European Commission-funded PRESCIENT project. The paper makes the point that in ethical dilemma scenarios, it is not immediately apparent what choices policy‐makers should select. Hence, there is a need for undertaking a privacy and ethical impact assessment and engaging stakeholders in the process to identify and discuss the issues raised in the scenarios.

Biometric identification is thought to be less vulnerable to fraud and forgery than are traditional forms of identification. However biometric identification is not without vulnerabilities. In a 'spoofing attack' an artificial replica of an individual's biometric trait is used to induce a system to falsely infer that individual's presence. Techniques such as liveness-detection and multi-modality, as well as the development of new and emerging modalities, are intended to secure biometric identification systems against such threats. Unlike biometrics in general, the societal and ethical issues raised by spoofing and anti-spoofing techniques have not received much attention. This paper examines these issues.