The Limits of Law and the Value of Rights in Addressing Terrorism: A Study of the UN Counterterrorism Architecture
This chapter starts from a critical and historical assessment of the phenomena of terrorism, and the tendency to inflate, conflate, and abuse the concept in law and practice. The analysis addresses the increasing tendency to lump various disaggregated experiences of violence under the banner of terrorism, the practice of numerous states in defining many forms of legitimate dissent, expression, and religious practice as terrorism, and the inability or unwillingness to disaggregate terrorism from complex forms of low- to high-intensity armed conflict subject to appropriate regulation under the laws of armed conflict. In tandem, the chapter addresses the relationship between the increased pervasiveness of certain forms of violence and the conditions conducive to terrorism, with a particular emphasis on the social science data that underpins this push-pull relationship, and the central role of the repressive, unaccountable, and dysfunctional state to the production of violence. The analysis pays particular attention to the emergence of an expansive UN counterterrorism architecture post 9/11and pinpoints the ways in which this architecture has enabled a permissive global environment for the abuse of counterterrorism in the past two decades. In assessing a positive way forward, the chapter affirms the central role of effective accountability and oversight in addressing state abuses of counterterrorism discourse and practice. It underscores the long-term dangers to peace and security absent significant pruning and restraint in global, regional, and national counterterrorism practices.
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