Human Rights and Terrorism



Defining Terrorism
•Act of Terrorism vs. Act of War vs. Criminal Act
•Not a single definition.
•Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism (still negotiated) works roughly with the
following definition: Causing death or serious bodily injury, serious damage to public or private
property (or a damage resulting major economic loss, when the purpose of the conduct, by its nature
or context, is to intimidate a population, or to compel a state or an international organization to
do or abstain from doing any act.
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Defining Terrorism
•Alternative definitions
•Problems: state terrorism, liberation movements.

Connections Between Human Rights and Terrorism
•Terrorism as a threat to human rights
•Fight against terrorism as a justification of HR limitations/violation (constitution/human rights
are “not a suicide pact“)

Fight against terrorism as justification of HR violations
•Pushing the boundaries (questioning absolute rights, obscuring well established concepts: both
strategies are present in the torture debate – cf. „ticking bomb scenario“ or waterboarding)
•Developing new limitations
•Impact on proportionality analysis

Which rights are affected
•Right to life (targeted killings either by drones or by other means, extraordinary renditions
etc.) •Prohibition of torture (enhanced interrogation techniques, extraordinary renditions)

Which rights are affected
•Right to privacy (data retention, CCTVs)
•Equality (racial or ethnic profiling)
•Liberty and security (detentions, extraordinary renditions)
•Due process and the right to a fair trial
•And many others…
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Pushing the boundaries
•Extraordinary renditions
•Very “comprehensive” program
•El Masri case

Pushing the boundaries
•Racial profiling
•Racial profiling occurs when a police officer takes an action (stops, questions, arrests etc.)
someone solely on the basis of the person's race or ethnicity or – more broadly when state (police)
use race as a factor that (though usually not alone) causes an officer to react with suspicion and
take action.
•Condemned by CERD Comittee, highly problematic.
•

New limitations
•Targeted killings
•Extrajudicial killing or assasination
•For example: the use of combat drones to kill members of al-Qaeda
•The key legal problems are the (non)existence of an armed conflict, „direct participation in
hostilities“ etc.

New limitations
•Data retention
•Data vs. metadata
•Collection of the data
•Access to the data
•How to justify data retention?
•American vs. European approach