Charlie Magri Co-Authors Just Security Article on INTERPOL’s New Immunity Agreement

The new INTERPOL immunity agreement, formally the General Agreement on the Privileges and Immunities of INTERPOL, was adopted at the organisation’s General Assembly in Marrakech on 24 to 27 November 2025. The Agreement is now open for signature and ratification by INTERPOL’s 196 member nations. Thirteen states have signed so far. No state has yet deposited an instrument of ratification.

Charlie Magri, Ted R. Bromund, and Sandra Grossman have co-authored a new article in Just Security titled “Why Interpol’s Member Nations Should Reject Its New Privileges and Immunities Agreement,” analysing the INTERPOL immunity agreement and arguing that member states should decline to sign.

Suing INTERPOL was already a narrow path

The article begins with a point that often surprises people: even before Marrakech, suing INTERPOL for abuse of its data-processing systems was already extremely difficult.

In the United States, INTERPOL has enjoyed broad immunity since 1983 under Executive Order 12425, which designated it as a public international organisation under the International Organization Immunities Act. Successive executive orders in 1995 and 2009 extended that immunity further. The U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed in 2022, in El Omari v. INTERPOL, that the organisation enjoys “the same immunity from suit normally enjoyed by foreign sovereigns.” For all practical purposes, INTERPOL is immune from suit in U.S. courts.

In Europe, the picture has been different. INTERPOL has remained vulnerable in principle to claims under EU law and the European Convention on Human Rights, particularly the right to an effective remedy. That vulnerability became visible in 2015, when INTERPOL paid out a substantial settlement before the Permanent Court of Arbitration in a case brought by Indonesian nationals. The “Red Notice Settlement,” as INTERPOL’s own audited financial reports refer to it, was followed shortly afterwards by a renegotiation of INTERPOL’s headquarters agreement with France and by the wave of reforms that produced the current CCF Statute (2016), the Notices and Diffusions Task Force, and the current Rules on the Processing of Data.

Since then, INTERPOL has consistently positioned the CCF as an “effective remedy” within the meaning of European jurisprudence. The narrow European litigation window has remained open in principle, but the bar has risen.

What the INTERPOL immunity agreement changes

The General Agreement is designed to close what was left.

It grants INTERPOL near-complete immunity in national courts for its data-processing activities. Disputes about INTERPOL data are routed exclusively to the CCF. Because the CCF can correct or delete records but cannot award damages, individuals targeted through INTERPOL channels would lose the only remaining external avenue of legal accountability in any state that ratifies.

The carve-outs in the Agreement, namely commercial contracts, motor-vehicle claims, and waivers by the Secretary General, do not help individuals subject to abusive Red Notices or diffusions. They concern operational matters unrelated to the only reason INTERPOL is a serious subject of public policy: the data it processes and the abuse of that data.

Why the authors argue against signature

The article’s central argument is not that INTERPOL is currently easy to sue. It is that the small remaining possibility of litigation, particularly in Europe, appears to have been the engine behind every major reform INTERPOL has undertaken since 2015.

The 2015 settlement is widely seen as the catalyst for the 2016 CCF Statute. The sustained press coverage of Blue Notice abuse in early 2024 is widely understood as having driven the Blue Notice screening reforms announced in late 2024. The pattern, the authors argue, is consistent: external accountability has tended to produce internal reform.

Removing that pressure, the authors contend, would weaken the political position of reformers inside the organisation at precisely the moment when patterns of INTERPOL abuse are evolving faster than the organisation’s safeguards can keep up. The piece urges member nations, particularly the United States and European Union member states, to decline to sign the Agreement and to signal that refusal publicly.