Wrongfully detaining civilians has become an increasingly normalized tool of authoritarian statecraft. Regimes like Russia, China, and Iran, as well as terrorist groups like Al Qaeda and Hamas, routinely use hostage-taking as a form of coercive diplomacy. Despite growing awareness, most rights-respecting states have taken limited domestic action to address the problem.
In a new peer-reviewed article published in the Journal of Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism, Sarah Teich examines recent parliamentary deliberations in Canada and Australia and draws lessons from Canada’s Bill C-353 to propose a framework for substantive legal and policy reform. The article calls on democracies to move beyond symbolic declarations and take concrete steps: authorizing targeted sanctions against those responsible for or complicit in wrongful detentions, ensuring families of detainees receive consistent communication and psychological support, and empowering ministers to offer monetary rewards or refugee protection to foreign nationals who help secure the release of detainees. Any reform, the article argues, must centre the lived experiences of those who have been wrongfully detained.
