A Comparative Security Analysis of Human Rights and Terrorism

Abstract

Liberal values are under siege from terrorism, but questions exist concerning Eurocentric notions of terrorism and the source of supposedly illegitimate violence.In the post 9/11 geopolitical landscape, “conventional wisdom holds that governments reactively restrict rights to forestall additional attacks…to more effectively pursue suspected terrorists.” Terrorism violates the fundamental human rights of its victims to life, liberty, security, and dignity of the individual. In the face of increasing terrorism and terrorist attacks, governments around the world have taken steps to bolster security at the cost of liberty. Juxtaposed against the backdrop of civil European responses to terrorism, this approach is especially evident within U.S. military institutions and counter-terrorism regimes. Despite new geopolitical realities of asymmetric, non-conventional and transnational warfare, liberal values and human rights principles should not be abandoned, such that existing standards of human rights can nonetheless accommodate an appropriate balance between liberty and security. This essay will serve to critically examine counter-terror responses in the context of human rights standards. A clear overlap between international human rights law (HRL) and international humanitarian law (IHL) is evidenced by the co-current guarantees of non-derogable physical integrity rights. State pre-commitments to HRL and IHL principles, serve to establish a consistent, morally authoritative, legally affirmed, human rights approach to counter-terrorism. As the West struggles with terrorist threats – actors who do not operate within ‘acceptable’ norms of belligerent conduct, it is crucial that we ask how ‘our’ security can be safeguarded without undermining those very same norms.