By: Carla Ferstman

My motivations to write this book stem in part from my having left in 2018 my work at the nongovernmental organisation REDRESS after what then felt like a lifetime of 17 years. I was trying to unpack and process what I learnt from all those I worked with – my colleagues, our partners and, of course, our clients – all of them survivors of torture, and the bulk of them having been arbitrarily detained, many for extended periods of time. The subject matter shaped my work over many years representing and advocating on behalf of persons detained in different parts of the world for reasons including their human rights advocacy, connections to certain political or other movements, the persecution they faced in their home countries, and the policies of deterrence put in place by countries attempting to stem the flow of migrants or respond to the threats of terrorism. The trauma of arbitrary detention and torture, and the heavy emotions associated with pursuing remedies, was at the heart of what we did, why we did it, who we did it with, and what it meant to survivors. It framed why we kept going, how we approached the barriers we faced and the motivation we brought to the advocacy work and the litigation. My decision to concentrate on arbitrary detention in this book is because it was at the heart of so many of the cases I encountered and was so central to the intense and continuing suffering of former detainees. Added to this was my belief from the world around me that the scourge of detention, including arbitrary detention, was being normalised by a growing number of governments for increasingly nefarious reasons.

The other impetus stems from my experience of the COVID-19 lockdowns. Early in the pandemic, I co-edited a collection of reflections on COVID in which I began to think through the relationship between pandemics and detention. These early reflections helped to hone my thinking on exceptionalities, arbitrariness, vulnerabilities and the placement of law, which have become crucial themes explored in the book.

Bristol University Press, May 2024