Fionnuala Ni Aolain, the newly-appointed UN Special Rapporteur on the protection and promotion of human rights while countering terrorism, chose France for the first official visit of her new mandate in May 2018. The Special Rapporteur's autumn 2017 request for an official visit was triggered by the fact that France had activated a special legal regime (the 'state of emergency') in the wake of the terrorist attacks at the Bataclan and the Stade de France on 13 November 2015, maintaining it for a duration of nearly two years, and was at the time preparing to find a way out of this 'state of exception'. She thus wanted to analyse and monitor the ways in which France was planning to lift the so-called state of emergency. Since, as a Special Rapporteur whose previous academic work in addition to her first official reports in this new capacity indicated that she would be willing to pay attention to 'complex emergencies' as well as 'de facto states of exception', France turned out to be a very appropriate choice for her first official visit.