Chapter 5 • Human Rights and Arrest, Pre-Trial and Administrative Detention 1. Introduction The present chapter will provide an analysis of the basic legal rules governing arrest, detention on remand and administrative detention in international human rights law. In so doing, it will, inter alia, deal in some depth with the reasons justifying arrest and continued detention and the right of a person deprived of his or her liberty to challenge the legality of this deprivation of liberty. Emphasis will be laid on the jurisprudence of the Human Rights Committee, the Inter-American and European Courts of Human Rights, and the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, which provide interpretations which are indispensable for a full understanding of the meaning of the international legal rules governing arrest and detention. As to the treatment of detainees and the specific interests and rights of children and women, these issues, although in many ways very closely linked to the subject matter of the present chapter, will be dealt with in separate chapters focusing specifically on the rights and interests of these groups (see Chapters 8, 10 and 11 of this Manual). 2. Arrests and Detention without Reasonable Cause: a Persistent Problem All human beings have the right to enjoy respect for their liberty and security. It is axiomatic that, without an efficient guarantee of the liberty and security of the human person, the protection of other individual rights becomes increasingly vulnerable and often illusory. Yet, as is evidenced by the work of the international monitoring organs, arrests and detentions without reasonable cause, and without there being any effective legal remedies available to the victims concerned, are commonplace. In the course of such arbitrary and unlawful deprivations of liberty, the detainees are frequently also deprived of access both to lawyers and to their own families, and also subjected to torture and other forms of ill-treatment.1. It is essential, therefore, that the legal rules that exist in international law to remedy and prevent these kinds of human rights violations be adhered to by national judges and prosecutors, and that lawyers are aware of their contents, to enable them to act effectively on behalf of their clients. Although arbitrary or unlawful arrests and detentions occur, and can occur, at any time, the experience of, inter alia, the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has shown that the main causes of arbitrary detentions are related to states of emergency.2 However, the question of emergency powers relating to deprivation of liberty will be dealt with in Chapter 16 of this Manual, and will thus not be considered in the present context. 1 See e.g. UN doc. E/CN.4/1999/63, Report of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. 2 UN doc. E/CN.4/1996/ 40, Report of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, para. 106. Human Rights in the Administration of Justice: A Manual on Human Rights for Judges, Prosecutors and Lawyers 161