In our increasingly globalised world, there is a growing need for effective extradition laws to help fight cross border crime. The fundamental human right to a fair trial must, however, be at the heart of cross border justice.
Since 9/11, countries have made it quicker and easier to extradite people (the legal process for transferring people from one country to another to face trial or serve a sentence). Effective extradition systems are crucial but these changes have come at the cost of respect for basic human rights, with people being extradited to countries where their human rights are at serious risk, months or years before a trial is due to start, for minor crimes where the human and financial cost of extradition is disproportionate. A major focus of our work has been the European Arrest Warrant, a fast-track system for surrendering people from one EU country to another.
We want countries to have effective extradition arrangements so that they can fight serious cross-border crime and terrorism, but we believe extradition laws can and should contain safeguards to ensure that basic human rights are respected. The safeguards we are seeking include:
Fair Trials has been campaigning for fairer extradition laws since 2009. We are:
Within Europe, we are also working to improve respect for basic fair trial rights, to build a sound basis for trust in all EU countries’ justice systems. This is needed for the fair operation of the European Arrest Warrant (see EU Defence Rights). (link)
Persuading states to match effective extradition laws with safeguards for human rights has been a challenge but our campaign is working: