Human Rights And Non Discrimination In The War On Terror

In the post-September 11th era, liberal democracies face the question of whether, and if so to what extent, they should change the relationship between liberty and security. This book explores how three major liberal democratic states - the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany - have approached this challenge by analysing the human rights impacts of their anti-terrorism laws and practices. The analysis reveals that the most far-reaching restrictions of liberty have been imposed on minorities: foreign nationals and certain 'racial', ethnic and religious groups. This Disparate treatment raises complex issues concerning the human right to non-discrimination. Differential treatment on the basis of nationality, national origin, 'race' or religion is only compatible with the right to non-discrimination if there are objective and reasonable grounds for it. The author evaluates contemporary anti-terrorism efforts for their compliance with this requirement. Is there, in the context of the current 'war on terror', sufficient justification for applying powers of preventive detention or trial by special tribunal only to foreign nationals? Are law enforcement methods or immigration policies that single out people for special scrutiny based on their national origin, or their ethnic or religious appearance, a suitable and proportionate means of countering terrorism? The concluding part of the book argues that, in the long term, discriminatory anti-terrorism measures will have impacts beyond their original scope and fundamentally reshape ordinary legal regimes and law enforcement methods.

Analyzes the human rights impacts of anti-terrorism laws and practices in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany.

This book reviews the war on terror since 9/11 from a human rights perspective.

The human rights regime adopts a legalist approach to limit the harm the powerful may inflict on the vulnerable The attacks of September 11, 2001 and the ensuing 'war against terrorism' test the limits of the legalist approach. Human rights constrain state responses to terrorism more directly than they govern the conduct of terrorists. As a result, the international human rights regime is disadvantaged rhetorically and politically. While substantive human rights standards have not changed since September 11, six possible norm developments may occur: (1) alterations in norms governing the use of force may increase the perceived legitimacy of pre-emptive defensive action, for example with regard to targeted assassinations; (2) reconceptualization of counter-terrorism as a new species of international armed conflict may displace human rights law and international criminal law, and substitute new rules that are less detailed than those that apply to conventional armed conflicts; (3) derogation principles may be refined, especially in relation to the temporal element and the non-derogability of the prohibition on arbitrary detention and of fair trial rights; (4) an increase in the commission of extraterritorial human rights violations may spur the clarification of the scope of human rights treaties ratione loci; (5) the targeting of non-citizens, Muslims and Arabs may clarify non-discrimination norms; and (6) exclusion from refugee protection may expand. In institutional terms, the 'war against terrorism' has not yet had significant effects, but the following issues are notable: (1) integrating human rights into UN counter-terrorism initiatives; (2) the aggressive campaign by the United States Government against the International Criminal Court; (3) the tendency toward American exceptionalism; (4) leadership by Europe to preserve human rights principles in counter-terrorism; (5) increased polarization of UN human rights bodies around the Israeli-Palestinian crisis; (6) silencing of criticism of gross violators in exchange for counter-terrorist cooperation; and (7) marginalization of human rights treaty bodies as effective monitors of counter-terrorist policies.

In recent years, there has been much controversy about the proper forum in which to prosecute and punish suspected terrorists. Some have endorsed aggressive use of military commissions; others have proposed an entirely new "national security court." However, as the nation strives for a vigorous and effective response to terrorism, we should not lose sight of the important tools that are already at our disposal, nor should we forget the costs and risks of seeking to break new ground by departing from established institutions and practices. As this White Paper shows, the existing criminal justice system has proved successful at handling a large number of important and challenging terrorism prosecutions over the past fifteen years-without sacrificing national security interests, rigorous standards of fairness and due process, or just punishment for those guilty of terrorism-related crimes.

From the bestselling, award-winning author of The Buddha in the Attic and The Swimmers, this commanding debut novel paints a portrait of the Japanese American incarceration camps that is both a haunting evocation of a family in wartime and a resonant lesson for our times. On a sunny day in Berkeley, California, in 1942, a woman sees a sign in a post office window, returns to her home, and matter-of-factly begins to pack her family's possessions. Like thousands of other Japanese Americans they have been reclassified, virtually overnight, as enemy aliens and are about to be uprooted from their home and sent to a dusty incarceration camp in the Utah desert. In this lean and devastatingly evocative first novel, Julie Otsuka tells their story from five flawlessly realized points of view and conveys the exact emotional texture of their experience: the thin-walled barracks and barbed-wire fences, the omnipresent fear and loneliness, the unheralded feats of heroism. When the Emperor Was Divine is a work of enormous power that makes a shameful episode of our history as immediate as today's headlines.

This research examines the ways in which race, gender, and capital structure the "War on Terror" by systematically unpacking the connections, and contradictions, in both the global and domestic arenas of US politics and representation of Muslims. The War on Terror is the most privatized war in the history of the US, which provides an important site of analysis to explore the burgeoning industry created and sustained by fear of terrorism. The scapegoating of Muslims as suspected terrorists allows for the uninhibited development and justification for the increasingly privatized Homeland Security State. This research draws upon both the lived experiences of 60 young adult Muslims in Los Angeles along with extensive archival data on Muslim discrimination, to provide a comprehensive overview of the racialized and gendered processes shaping the representation, oppression, and emergent identities of the Muslim diaspora. I situate their experiences within the context of three central dimensions of the War on Terror; state practices and policies, public discrimination and hate crimes, and ideological representations. My research further juxtaposes the imperial deployment of women's rights discourses in justifying the "War on Terror" abroad alongside the widespread infringement on Muslim women's civil liberties in the US diaspora. While Arab and Muslim American communities have been frequent targets of repression, I argue that gender significantly structures the post-9/11 backlash in qualitatively different ways for men and women. That is, Muslim men have been characterized as dangerous, violent, and highly suspect within the popular imaginary and much of Western media, which has lead to the sanctioning of civil and human rights violations, largely through detainment, deportation, and surveillance. In contrast, Muslim women are consistently portrayed as voiceless victims without agency, further invisibilizing their own lived experiences of systemic discrimination as well as the ways in which diasporic Muslim women navigate and resist such structures of exclusion.

In this important book George Dvaladze unpacks the complexity of the international legal regulation of guarantees of equality and non-discrimination applicable in armed conflict. The book provides a general overview of the guarantees of equality and non-discrimination under both International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and human rights, demonstrating key principles and notions with illustrative examples from contemporary armed conflicts. This book will be a beneficial resource for legal audiences interested in international law, namely law of armed conflict or IHL, human rights, and non-discrimination.

The Oklahoma City bombing, intentional crashing of airliners on September 11, 2001, and anthrax attacks in the fall of 2001 have made Americans acutely aware of the impacts of terrorism. These events and continued threats of terrorism have raised questions about the impact on the psychological health of the nation and how well the public health infrastructure is able to meet the psychological needs that will likely result. Preparing for the Psychological Consequences of Terrorism highlights some of the critical issues in responding to the psychological needs that result from terrorism and provides possible options for intervention. The committee offers an example for a public health strategy that may serve as a base from which plans to prevent and respond to the psychological consequences of a variety of terrorism events can be formulated. The report includes recommendations for the training and education of service providers, ensuring appropriate guidelines for the protection of service providers, and developing public health surveillance for preevent, event, and postevent factors related to psychological consequences.