Dr Gavin Sullivan’s pro bono work featured in New York Review of Books

An article published by the New York Review of Books on 26 July 2026 has profiled the pro bono legal work of Dr Gavin Sullivan, Reader in International Human Rights Law at Edinburgh Law School, focusing on his years-long representation of a former Yemeni governor wrongly placed on the United Nations' terrorism sanctions list.

The article, "Life on the List" by Caitlin L. Chandler, follows the case of Naif al-Qaysi, who was appointed governor of Yemen's Al-Bayda province in 2015 while leading local forces against Houthi advances. In 2016 the US Treasury designated him a "Specially Designated Global Terrorist," and in February 2017 the UN Security Council added him to its Al-Qaeda and Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Da'esh) Sanctions List, alleging he had financed and facilitated al-Qaeda activity in the province. Al-Qaysi denied the allegations, and separate Yemeni government and human rights investigations found no evidence to support them.

Dr Sullivan, working pro bono alongside barrister Rachel Barnes, took on al-Qaysi's case in 2017 and filed a formal delisting appeal with the UN ombudsperson's office in 2021. The office's confidential report to the Security Council found the listing "diametrically opposed and irreconcilably contradictory" to publicly available facts about al-Qaysi's role, and concluded that at least some of the accusations against him were likely intentional. Al-Qaysi was formally delisted by the UN in 2022, though he remains listed by the US Treasury.

The case is one of several Dr Sullivan has taken on since 2010, when he began representing individuals wrongly placed on UN terrorism blacklists while working at a human rights organisation in Berlin. All six of his clients to date have been successfully delisted. Overall, nearly 70 percent of delisting petitions submitted to the UN are ultimately granted — a figure suggesting that a significant number of people are mistakenly included on the list in the first place.

Dr Sullivan's work highlights the practical difficulty of challenging UN sanctions listings, which are based on classified intelligence shared in secret by member states and rarely disclosed to the individuals affected. The UN does not provide legal aid for those seeking to challenge their inclusion, and Sullivan has carried out much of this casework alongside his academic roles.

Dr Sullivan said: "Targeted sanctions are a powerful technique of economic warfare and counterterrorism widely used against Muslims after 9/11 during the so-called ‘global war on terror’. For those targeted like Naif the effects can be devastating and enduring – they cannot work or travel, it becomes a crime to ‘associate’ with them, and they are labelled as ‘terrorist’ for the rest of their lives even long after the sanctions are lifted. Listed people deserve the right to due process to defend themselves against secret allegations. And as the use of sanctions continues to expand in the present to target new ‘enemies’, we need to find ways to politically and legally challenge them."

Dr Sullivan continues to work on al-Qaysi's case, now pursuing an appeal to the US Treasury for his removal from its sanctions list — a process that has succeeded in only a small number of cases to date.

Read the full New York Review of Books feature: "Life on the List" by Caitlin L. Chandler