A/HRC/16/50 which guarantee minimum due process standards, for both listing and de-listing decisions. This should include ensuring full support to the office of the newly-established Ombudsperson, as well as monitoring and reviewing its practices as necessary, while developing additional mechanisms to enhance due process protections for listing and delisting procedures, such as further steps to increase transparency of the listing process and the establishment of clear time limits for listing. It should also include the establishment of an independent, quasi-judicial procedure for review of listing and de-listing decisions. I also urge Member States to ensure that implementation at the national level is done in a manner consistent with their international human rights obligations. B. Due process and the right to fair trial in the context of counterterrorism 28. In the Plan of Action under the Global Strategy, States undertake to “make every effort to develop and maintain an effective and rule of law-based national criminal justice system that can ensure, in accordance with … obligations under international law, that any person who participates in the financing, planning, preparation or perpetration of terrorist acts or in support of terrorist acts is brought to justice, on the basis of the principle to extradite or prosecute, with due respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms”.17 States are under the obligation to ensure that all guarantees of due process are respected when persons who are alleged to have committed terrorism-related offences are arrested, charged, detained and prosecuted. Guaranteeing due process rights, including for individuals suspected of terrorist activity, is also critical for ensuring that anti-terrorism measures are effective, respect the rule of law and are seen to be fair. 29. Due process-related rights for persons accused of acts of terrorism include various interrelated aspects. Article 10 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which both aim at ensuring the proper administration of justice, set out the bedrock norms applicable in all trials, whether of alleged terrorists or otherwise. Persons charged with criminal offences, including terrorism-related crimes, are entitled to guarantees including: the guarantee of equality of all persons before the courts and tribunals; the right to be presumed innocent; the right to a hearing with due process guarantees, including the right to be tried within a reasonable time and by a competent, independent and impartial court or tribunal; and the right to have a conviction and sentence reviewed by a higher court or tribunal in conformity with international human rights law.18 Ensuring the right to a fair trial in the context of counterterrorism necessarily includes the protection of a number of other human rights, such as the absolute prohibition of torture, or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. 30. International humanitarian law provides for substantially similar protections for the trial of persons in the context of armed conflicts.19 Given that the right to a fair trial is 17 18 19 General Assembly resolution 60/288, annex, chap. IV. Human Rights Committee general comment 32 (2007) on the right to equality before courts and tribunals and to a fair trial. See also the report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism (A/63/223, para. 7). Guidance on the right to fair trial also is reflected in the International Commission of Jurists Berlin Declaration on Upholding Human Rights and the Rule of Law in Combating Terrorism (28 August 2004). Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, art. 84; Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, arts. 54, 64-74 and 117-126; Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and Relating to the Protection of Victims of 11