Model Training Materials: Hate Speech, Defamation and National Security Principles on National Security, Freedom of Expression and Access to Information, 115 and the Siracusa Principles on the Limitation and Derogation Provisions in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.116 General Principles The Human Rights Committee has indicated that “extreme care” must be taken with laws relating to national security such as treason laws, official secrets laws, sedition laws and other similar provisions.117 The concept of national security is “vulnerable to manipulation by the State as a means of justifying actions that target vulnerable groups” and is often used to justify unnecessary secrecy.118 The concept of “national security” has no standard precise definition under international law. However, threats to national security must be sufficiently grave to justify restricting freedom of expression. The UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression has said that such restrictions should only apply to the “most serious cases of a direct political or military threat to the entire nation.”119 The Siracusa Principles suggest the following approach: National security may be invoked to justify measures limiting certain rights only when they are taken to protect the existence of the nation or its territorial integrity or political independence against force or threat of force. . . National security cannot be invoked as a reason for imposing limitations to prevent merely local or relatively isolated threats to law and order.120 Similarly, the Johannesburg Principles indicate that only speech which amounts to incitement to violence should be sanctioned as a threat to national security: [E]xpression may be punished as a threat to national security only if a government can demonstrate that: (a) the expression is intended to incite imminent violence; (b) it is likely to incite such violence; and (c) there is a direct and immediate connection between the expression and the likelihood or occurrence of such violence. 121 The Johannesburg Principles on National Security, Freedom of Expression and Access to Information, 1 October 1995, Principle 6, https://bit.ly/2MdOgrH. 116 Siracusa Principles on the Limitation and Derogation Provisions in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 28 September 1984, https://bit.ly/2LNkNGD. 117 General Comment No. 34, note 43, para. 30. 118 Report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, 17 April 2013, para. 60, undocs.org/A/HRC/23/40. 119 Report of the Special Rapporteur, 14 December 1994, undocs.org/E/CN.4/1995/32, para. 48. 120 Siracusa Principles, note 116, paras. 29-30, https://bit.ly/2LNkNGD. 121 The Johannesburg Principles, note 115, Principle 6. 115 The Centre for Law and Democracy is a non-profit human rights organisation working internationally to provide legal expertise on foundational rights for democracy. 27