A new Niger government ordinance creating a database of people suspected of terrorism undermines fundamental rights enshrined in national and international law, Human Rights Watch said today.
The Human Rights Watch said the ordinance sets out overbroad criteria for inclusion in the database, deprives those listed of due process and an adequate redress mechanism and puts protection of personal data and other privacy rights at risk
On August 27, 2024, Gen. Abdourahamane Tiani signed Order No. 2024-43, establishing “an automated data processing file containing personal data of people, groups of people or entities involved in acts of terrorism.”
On September 6, Justice and Human Rights Minister Alio Dauda told the media that the ordinance relies on “a solid legal framework, both nationally and internationally,” includes provisions of the Nigerien penal code, and reflects United Nations Security Council resolution 1373, the counterterrorism resolution adopted after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
“Niger’s new counterterrorism order allows people to be labeled suspected terrorists on vague criteria and with no credible evidence,” said Ilaria Allegrozzi, senior Sahel researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The government should suspend the database until grounds for inclusion and other provisions meet international human rights standards.”
Human Rights Watch wrote to the Niger justice and human rights minister on September 12 and Gen. Tiani on September 13 to raise concerns about the ordinance and request responses to specific questions. Neither official has responded.
Under the ordinance, people or entities can also be listed in the database if suspected of “activities that may disrupt public peace and security,” or for “disseminating data or comments likely to disturb public order.”
The Human Rights Watch said such vaguely worded criteria facilitate unlawful restrictions on the rights to freedom of expression and association.
A Nigerien lawyer, Moussa Coulibaly, told Human Rights Watch that under this ordinance, “the standards are set so low that unverified sources of information can serve as the basis for putting someone in the database.”
Those included in the database face severe consequences, including being denied the ability to travel nationally and internationally, and finding their assets frozen. They may be stripped of their Nigerien nationality, increasing the risk of statelessness. Niger is a party to the UN Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, which prohibits depriving someone of their nationality if it would leave them stateless.
In recent years, Niger has faced brutal and abusive Islamist armed groups that have been operating across the Sahel region. These include the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) and the rival Al-Qaeda-linked Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wa al-Muslimeen, JNIM), as well as Boko Haram and the Islamic State in West Africa Province in its western and southeastern regions.
These armed groups have concentrated their recruitment efforts on ethnic Fulani by exploiting grievances with the government and other communities. The disproportionate presence of ethnic Fulani in the ranks of Islamist groups has led to the stigmatization of the entire Fulani community. Human Rights Watch has documented that the majority of victims of abusive government counterinsurgency operations in Niger in 2019 and 2020 were Fulani civilians.
Concerns about the misuse of the counterterrorism ordinance are heightened by the military government’s human rights record, Human Rights Watch said. Since coming to power in a coup in July 2023, the junta has cracked down on the political opposition, media, and peaceful dissent. Military authorities have arbitrarily detained former President Mohamed Bazoum and his wife, as well as dozens of officials from the ousted government and people close to the deposed president, failing to respect their rights to due process and a fair trial.
The ordinance does not provide listed individuals or entities with an effective mechanism to contest their inclusion in the list or obtain redress if wrongfully included. It does not require notifying them before they are included in the database, effectively denying them a meaningful opportunity to contest their placement.
Inclusion in the terrorist database will subject individuals to humiliation, fear and uncertainty, Human Rights Watch said. “The outcome is that people can be on the database for a long time, without any recourse and possibility to remove their names,” said a Nigerien journalist. “This ordinance also jeopardizes freedom of expression.”
The right to effective remedy is enshrined in international human rights treaties ratified by Niger, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
Finally, the ordinance raises serious privacy concerns, providing for the collection and processing of personal data in violation of the right to privacy under international human rights law. The ordinance provides few restrictions on the government’s collection and processing of personal data.
The African Commission Principles and Guidelines on Human and Peoples’ Rights while Countering Terrorism in Africa states that measures used to counter terrorism that interfere with privacy, in particular the “collection, access, use, storage, maintenance, examination, disclosure, destruction, and intra- and interstate dissemination and sharing of privacy information, including through the use of databases, must be provided for by law, strictly proportionate with and absolutely necessary for achieving a legitimate goal.”
“The counterterrorism ordinance creates a secretive watch list system that risks diverting attention from genuine threats facing the government,” Allegrozzi said. “Nigerien authorities should recognize that security concerns are best addressed by respecting human rights, not running roughshod over them.”
