SUBCOMMISSION DISCUSSES SCOPE AND NATURE OF TERRORISM

AFTERNOON

HR/SC/99/26
23 August 1999


The Subcommission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights continued discussion this afternoon of a variety of issues under the rubric of “review of further developments in fields with which the Subcommission has been or may be concerned”, including terrorist activities and how terrorism could best be defined.

Subcommission Expert Francoise Jane Hampson said the terms "terrorism" and "human-rights violations" were too often used interchangeably, and were defined too broadly. Criminal law and international judicial co-operation were the keys to combatting terrorism, she said.

Alternate Expert Antoanella Iulia Motoc said terrorism was connected to violence in political life. It could have positive aspects, she contended -- at times it could be connected with revolution, and revolution at times had been shown in a positive light, as it had contributed to progress.

Subcommission Expert Halima Embarket Warzazi contended that a great deal of tact would have to be used in defining terrorism.

The Subcommission also held a short debate on a document submitted by a representative from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on Subcommission expenses.

Other issues raised during the session included reservations to human-rights treaties and conventions and the importance of placing AIDS within a human-rights context.

Subcommission Experts Sang Yong Park, Louis Joinet, Rajenda Kalidas Wimala Gooneskere, David Weissbrodt and Soli Jehangir Sorabjee also participated in the discussion.

Non-governmental organizations speaking during the session were Interfaith International; Association of World Citizens; International commission of Jurists, Institute for Peace; Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Organization; World Federation of Trade Unions; Association for World Education; Himalayan Research and Cultural Foundation; International Council of Aids Service Organization; International Association of Democratic Lawyers; Internatinal Organization for the Elimination of of all Forms of Racial Discrimination; Medecins du monde; International Peace Bureau and Interntinal Educational Development (joint statement); and American Association of Jurists
Statements

SAYYED MOHAMMED AL-NUSAND, of Interfaith International, said that as part of its mission to promote human-rights principles for all humankind regardless of ethnic or religious background, Interfaith International was aiming for the development of inter-religious dialogue and grass-root awareness for human rights, and was concerned about the gap between what was declared in international gatherings and what was happening in the real world.

The organization was concerned over situations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Daghestan, Kashmir, Bahrain, southern Lebanon, and Algeria. UN human-rights capabilities could be enhanced by a better use of Internet facilities to help in monitoring the human-rights situations in many countries that violated human rights. The uncontrolled globalization of the media industry could result in the control of information by a few mulit-national conglomerates, and, as a result, moral values could be attacked. There should be a balancing of criteria for globalizing the media: freedom of expression and respect for religious and moral values should be ensured.

EDWIN FIRMAGE, of Association of World Citizens, said that as the world approached a new millennium, it was time to proclaim peace and renounce war. To help bring this about, States must eliminate their huge arsenals of nuclear weapons; disputes must be resolved by peaceful means; stereotypes and discrimination should be eliminated; and a balance between the needs of the community and the individual must be struck.

Cultural initiatives were one good way to bring these things about.

ALEJANDRO ARTUCIO, of International Commission of Jurists, said Trinidad and Tobago had withdrawn from the inter-American system of human rights because of various reservations. In July, Peru withdrew from the supreme jurisdictional body of human rights on the South American continent. The organization was very disturbed about this trend.

Ms. Hampson's paper was well-received, and ICJ supported the call for a study on this issue. A resolution would send a message to all States to improve the situation of human rights by abiding by all treaties.

KASHINATH PANDITA, of African Commission of Health and Human Rights Promoters, said the organization felt concern at the rising threat of terrorism in general, but over State terrorism in particular. State-sponsored terrorism was a phenomenon to which the Special Rapporteur on terrorism should give more in-depth study. This type of terrorism usually aimed at destabilizing a neighbouring State for a variety of reasons, such as political rivalry, economic competition, or others. There were wide-scale violations of human rights of people in large numbers perpetrated by States.

The study of the Special Rapporteur on terrorism would be appreciably upgraded if input from eminent historians and social scientists with expertise in the regions where human rights were violated was included. A regional in-depth study of terrorist phenomena would be more realistic than a package study of the entire issue.

FRANCOISE JANE HAMPSON, Subcommission Expert, said that, when speaking of "human rights violations" and "terrorism", there was a gap between the labels and content of the terms. There was a danger in broadening the terms so far that they lost their meaning. Did, for instance, the label "terrorism" add to an offense committed against an individual?

The key to the problem of terrorism was effective judicial co-operation, not labels. Nothing was to be gained by saying that a criminal violated human rights. The way to deal with so-called terrorism was through criminal law and international judicial co-operation. Human rights were a matter of civil liability, not criminal prosecution. Some States appeared to be saying that they should not be found responsible for human-rights violations unless so-called terrorists were found similarly responsible. At times, some States had violated their own human rights through human-rights enforcement or monitoring mechanisms. Their good faith was then called into question.

HALIMA EMBAREK WARZAZI, Subcommission Expert, said that with all the comments that had been made about terrorism, there should be a chance to discuss the matter in depth. Choices had to be made, and a lot of tact had to be used to define terrorism.

On the working paper to create a special mechanism to find out why some countries had not yet ratified international instruments, it was a little to early to consider a mechanism of the kind being considered in the Special Rapporteur's report. It would be important for the Special Rapporteur to consider studying the issue. Perhaps on this basis, each country could be asked why it was not ratifying international instruments. Often in developing countries, the reason treaties had not yet been ratified was because they may not have been given priority.

LIAURA BACHMAN, of International Institute for Peace, said that today an ever-increasing proportion of resources was being diverted to protect innocent people from terrorist attacks. Freedom of movement was becoming a luxury with barricades, and security checks were a routine phenomenon. All the freedoms that democratic societies cherished were in danger of becoming permanent hostages to terrorist groups. The problem was particularly acute in poor countries.

The evidence was overwhelming that Pakistan had emerged as the fountainhead of transnational terrorism. The entire international community should send teams to Pakistan to study the various terrorist groups and their affiliations there. Violations of human rights at the hands of terrorists would only end when Pakistan was helped to put itself in order.

ARIF MAHMOOD, of Afro Asian Peoples Solidarity Organization , said that the comparative availability of sophisticated weapons had a traumatic impact on societies. The trend towards the use of weapons to pursue political objectives was glorified during the Afghan war, when Pakistan housed the Mujahideen. Once the war was over, Pakistan's military apparatus appropriated most of this weaponry; other weapons found their way into arms bazaars where business was transacted with impunity.

There was also a connection with the narcotics trade which created powerful narco lords who operated with private armies. Parts of Pakistan were a perpetual battlefield. The spread of small weapons and the organized trade in them had also fuelled terrorism. A major casualty of the proliferation of small weapons was civilians.

KAREN TALBOT, of World Federation of Trade Unions, said it was appropriate that this August body had decided to debate the impact of terrorism on human rights. For too long the emphasis of the human-rights community had been on highlighting the wrongs perpetrated by State authorities against individuals. Today, if one dispassionately examined the human-rights situation, one could reasonably conclude that the 20th century was going to bequeath to the future the phenomenon of terrorism as the single most dangerous cause of human-rights violations of innocent people.

Contemporary terrorism was quite different from that of earlier decades. Groups like the Red Brigades and the Baader Meinhof did seek to articulate some political ideology and claimed to have taken to violence to change a particular national order. Today's terrorist was a killer at large, using religion to justify his crimes, and treating the entire world as his killing field. If the pronouncements of the leaders of the most talked-about terrorist outfits were to be considered seriously, then the target of today's terrorism was liberal democratic societies and systems that had adapted Western values of liberty and freedom.

DAVID LITTMAN, of Association for World Education, said the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the treaties grown from it had become accepted norms for the entire UN system. Directors and high-level personnel of the system should be chosen from countries which had, at the very least, ratified the UDHR and the International Bill of Human Rights, thus showing a dedication to the centrality of universal fundamental rights and freedoms.

This was a crucial principle, and should be respected in the case of the candidature of Saudi Ambassador Ghazi Gosaibi for the post of Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

K. WARIKOO, of Himalayan Research and Cultural Foundation, said the scourge of terrorism continued. It was a matter of grave concern that the terror and mayhem unleashed by religious extremist terrorist groups continued unabated in many parts of south and central Asia. There had been a number of brutal killings and ethnic cleansing. The process of Talibanization was growing. A new, lethal form of terrorism -- cross-border terrorism -- must be considered by the Subcommission.

DAVID PATTERSON, of International Council of AIDS Service Organizations, said a panel discussion last Friday had addressed several issues. First, the issue of access to treatment for HIV/AIDS, and the North-South gap. Over 95 per cent of people with HIV infection lived in developing countries and almost all had no access to the sophisticated drugs for treatment developed primarily for Western markets. Also, the issue of discriminatory travel restrictions, which had no basis in public health and were contrary to WHO policies and guidelines.

There was also the issue of the introduction of ineffective criminal laws which increased stigmas and promoted, rather than reduced, the spread and impact of HIV/AIDS, and the great disparity between the increasingly numerous statements of principles, rights and good intentions in the context of HIV/AIDS, and the global reality of communities infected and affected.

YORIO SHIOKAWA, of International Association of Democratic Lawyers, said that despite annual reports on the issue given to the Subcommission, not much had improved in the situation of Japanese workers exploited by their employers. The problems included long working hours and discouragement of independent trade unions. National institutions for the promotion and protection of human rights did not exist in Japan.

The Japanese Government should ratify all treaties linked to human rights, so as to make Japan a model country.

H. CHARAFEDDINA, of International Organization for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, said the manufacturing of arms and weapons of mass destruction represented an enormous human and financial investment which should be shifted to agriculture and schools. Education should be a main focus of attention for the international community. People needed to believe they could make an impact on the world around them.

The basic tenets and principles of the United Nations should be promoted through educational institutions.

GRACIELA ROBERT, of Medecins du Monde, said the organization had intervened many times in countries under embargo, and had thus been able to evaluate the consequences of such sanctions on the health of the most vulnerable populations, which included children, pregnant women, breast-feeding women and older people. Economic sanctions usually impeded access to medicines. Eradicated sicknesses could reappear, such as tuberculosis. The embargo was also a degenerative factor in the socio-economic environment of the populations affected.

It was not acceptable for civilian populations to bear the weight of economic embargoes, even if the international community felt obliged to impose such embargoes. The level of the protection of the human rights of a population and its access to these rights were an indicator of the populations’ vulnerability.

SANG YONG PARK, Subcommission Expert, said that in the preliminary report, which outlined the main questions to be analyzed in her study on terrorism and human rights, the Special Rapporteur had illuminated the reality of the close link between terrorism and human rights, employing an approach that involved three distinct areas of inquiry -- the life, liberty and dignity of the individual; democratic society; and social peace and public order. Their linkage underlined the importance of the study from a human-rights perspective as well as according justification and validity to the study. Terrorism must be seen from the perspective of grave violations of fundamental human rights, especially the right to live free from fear and the right to life, liberty and security.

The preliminary report discussed the conditions under which international terrorism did, or could, operate. The proliferation and potential availability of weapons of mass destruction could be seen; there was increasing access to biological and chemical agents, either through sale or manufacture; and there was an increasing vulnerability of civil society to the destructive potential of cyber-terrorism. Though not directly tied to terrorism per se, it was nevertheless noteworthy that a number of countries had developed, or might be developing nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and the means to deliver them.

LOUIS JOINET, Subcommission Expert, said a definition of terrorism was needed; terrorism should be looked at in the long-term, as it often was not static. Examples in Algeria, El Salvador and Guatemala were to the point. He agreed with Ms. Hampson that States were violators, while individuals, were criminals. It was important to examine where international law stood now on questions of terrorism. The issue was complex and controversial.

RAJENDA KALIDAS WIMALA GOONESKERE, Subcommission Expert, said the report on terrorism was a very important one. However, the NGO community had been faced with a dilemma, because time and again they had been accused of focussing on the State and not enough on terrorism. The attitude that even if it was terrorism, ordinary criminal law should be sufficient, was erroneous. The concept of enforcement mechanisms was problematic. Any attempt at defining terrorism should be postponed, and instead, instances of terrorism should be studied with the aim of finding common factors. There were many shades and forms of terrorism. Action should be supported for preventing terrorism, whether individual or general. The occurrence of terrorism extended to the United States, and ammunition control was urged for that country.

If all armies were abolished, then there would be no need for the Subcommission. The danger of terrorism in democratic societies was frequently that it caused a counter-terrorist movement which was without morals. There could be State terrorism to suppress non-State terrorism, and this was a frequent occurrence. There was a real problem with terrorism, and ordinary criminal law was insufficient to deal with it. Many took it for granted that extra-judicial killings were the only way to deal with terrorism. This concept should be opposed, as it was most dangerous. Modifications and amendments should be made to domestic and international law so as to deal with terrorism.

ANTOANELLA IULIA MOTOC, Subcommission Expert, said the whole matter of terrorism was connected to violence in political life. But there could be positive aspects, because such violence could be connected with revolution, and revolution at times had been shown in a positive light. At times, revolution had contributed to progress.

The question of terrorism was discussed at length during the Cold War because most Governments that were considered to be terrorist by one side were supported by the other side. Another problem that could be related to the issue was the delicate question of democracy. Democracy was an aim which States should have, and States could use differing procedures to achieve that end.

It was difficult to find an accepted definition of terrorism. Criteria were necessary. Among the criteria that should be used should be the type of violence employed and the aim of that violence.

DAVID WEISSBRODT, Subcommission Expert, said Professor Koufa's study on terrorism was among the most important submitted to the Subcommission. Some Western Governments had expressed concern about the study in the beginning, but the results should encourage them to support her continued efforts.

SOLI JEHANGIR SORABJEE, Subcommission Expert, said the problem of definition should not bog the Subcommission down. There should be some broad agreement on the acts defining a terrorist. Two concepts should be kept in mind: however noble the purpose, the killing of the innocent was utterly indefensible, and the purpose could not justify such acts, since they were blatant violations of the human rights of those killed, as well as being threats to order and stability, and any State that did not combat them could be accused of being a terrorist State.

States should not forget the human rights of terrorists themselves, no matter their crimes, since in this case the State also became a terrorist, and its worst terrorist acts were extra-judicial killings. Terrorism was bred in the hearts and minds of men, and it was only in these places that it could be effectively combatted.

CATHERINE EULER, of International Peace Bureau and International Educational Development, in a joint statement, said the use of uranium-depleted weapons should be condemned, since not only did they contravene all rules of humanity, but they also had caused untold harm to those not involved in a conflict, for example during the First Gulf War. These weapons had been in use during the Kosovo conflict as well, and refugees now were being sent back to areas contaminated by these weapons.


These weapons had grave consequences on the health of those affected, as well as on the health of their offspring. The weapons caused harm on a wide range, harmed the environment, had a considerable negative effect even over time, and were basically inhumane. The use of these weapons was a grave breach of humanitarian law, and the Subcommission should take action on this emergent issue.

VIOLA ANTILEO, of American Association of Jurists, said in Yugoslavia, NATO had unleashed a war using prohibited weapons and had violated the Geneva Conventions. Following the occupation of Kosovo by NATO, the ethnic cleansing had come to an end, but the Serbs had been victims of crimes of revenge.

Iraq, for its part, continued to suffer from an international economic embargo. It was estimated that half a million children had died, and hence the embargo could be considered an act of genocide. It was said on television in the United States that the death of children was the price to pay so that United States soldiers did not have to go into Iraq. Statements should be adopted that condemned the crimes being committed in Kosovo and called for an end to the embargo against Iraq.