State Sponsored Hostage Taking
15
September 2021 — 5:00PM TO 6:00PM
Anonymous (not verified)
9 July 2021
Online

Where next for the international community?

In February, 58 countries came together – convened by Canada – to condemn ‘arbitrary detention’ by states like China, Iran, North Korea and Russia, who seize foreign and dual nationals as leverage against their governments back home. This was swiftly followed by statements from the March meeting of G7 Foreign Ministers. Cases like that of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe are all too familiar and scores of other British, American, European and Chinese citizens have experienced a similar fate. Authoritarian states increasingly see hostage taking as a way of pressuring and humiliating western governments.

With the international community newly united in their determination to stop this conflict by human proxy, this event will ask: what can be done to stop countries like North Korea and Iran from engaging in state hostage taking? What are the right and appropriate responses to get people home? What is the role of international institutions alongside national governments? And what can we learn from efforts to tackle other forms of hostage taking – terrorist, economic, criminal – and comparable areas of policy?

Source: Chathamhouse Events