What is INTERPOL's Article 2, the human-rights rule?

What the rule says

The 1956 Constitution was the first of INTERPOL’s statutes to mention human rights. The data rules carry it through: Article 2 of the Rules on the Processing of Data repeats the reference, Article 11 requires processing to respect “the basic rights of the persons who are the subject of the cooperation”, and Article 34(1) obliges every National Central Bureau, before recording anything, to check the data against Article 2 and the Declaration. The General Secretariat’s legal review of every Red Notice under Article 86 looks “in particular” at both.

How INTERPOL reads it

The Repository of Practice, updated in November 2024, is INTERPOL’s own account. The spirit of the Declaration means processing consistent with its goals and principles, as developed by the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention against Torture and the Refugee Convention. But the General Secretariat neither evaluates a country’s human-rights situation nor investigates torture claims: it “may only rely on findings by bodies competent to assess them” — a UN committee, a national court. A conviction resting on a confession extracted by torture bars the data; an excessive pre-trial detention, though a violation, “might not undermine the compliance of the data”. Four outcomes follow: a violation tainting the whole request, such as a refugee sought by the country fled; a Red Notice refused while a lesser recording survives; a discriminatory phrase removed; no violation.

Where it differs from Article 3

Article 3 is INTERPOL’s own rule, interpreted by its own resolutions; Article 2 imports outside norms, so a finding under it “will inevitably refer to international law norms”. Persecution for gender or sexual orientation breaches Article 2 but not Article 3; a case touching INTERPOL’s neutrality is the reverse; freedom of expression engages both. The Article 34(3) elements apply too, including the requesting country’s record in using INTERPOL’s channels: past breaches do not bar a new request, but they count.

What it means for a request

Article 2 rewards documents, not adjectives. What moves it is a competent body’s finding about you: an asylum grant, a reasoned refusal of extradition on human-rights grounds, a judgment on the trial, a UN committee’s view. General country reports may “identify aspects to further scrutinize” but will not alone end a notice. Among the rules that get a Red Notice deleted, Article 2 turns a finding made elsewhere into a decision at INTERPOL.

Related

• What is INTERPOL’s Article 3, the “political character” rule?
• Which INTERPOL rules get a Red Notice deleted?
• Can INTERPOL circulate a Red Notice against a refugee?