The Impact of Counter Terror on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights: A Global Perspective

Abstract

Human rights activists in many parts of the world share a rising sense of alarm about the new challenges of promoting human rights in the context of heightened global concern about the threat of terrorism. Pre-existing conflicts in different parts of the globe have been sustained and exacerbated by being characterized as fronts in the global war on terrorism; a designation that governments appear to believe gives them greater latitude to disregard the constraints of international human rights law and humanitarian law. Previously peaceful countries have seen tractable, if difficult, political problems escalate into violence as governments have resorted to military force as a preferred method in confronting a terrorist threat. Everywhere human rights activists are wrestling with a seachange in what might be called the presumptive norm in international affairs that prior to September 11, 2001, saw adherence to international human rights standards as generally desirable, whereas now the primacy of respect for international human rights standards is routinely challenged and questioned in word and deed by governments of all kinds, democratic and undemocratic alike.