Terrorism and human rights

The articles in this symposium explore the relationships between terrorism and government respect for human rights. These relationships have wide-ranging implications for the study of politics. Terrorism is seen as a major threat to political stability in many countries. Respect for internationally recognized human rights is a fundamental responsibility of national governments. Can governments prevent terrorism while also respecting human rights, or must authorities trade off some human rights to reduce terrorism? If the latter is the case, which human rights can or should be sacrificed for the goal of stopping terrorism? These issues are at the core of contemporary debates about counterterrorism policy. Consider first the possibility that terrorism leads governments to subsequently restrict human rights. This relationship is debated every time a country becomes the victim of a terrorist campaign. After the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, many people inside and outside of the government concluded that it was appropriate—indeed, necessary—to respond by limiting rights. The argument was that rights such as freedom of movement and speech made it much easier for terrorists to plan and organize their attacks. Others concluded that such restrictions would undermine American democracy in fundamental ways. Although legal scholars and political philosophers have often debated these issues in abstract terms, too little systematic evidence exists about how governments actually respond to terrorist attacks. An important objective of the articles in this symposium is to develop a better understanding of how and why political authorities respond to terrorist violence. A second concern is how respect for human rights influences terrorist attacks. On this issue, a remarkable transformation has taken place within the policy community. Until a fewyears ago, the dominant conclusionwas that limiting rights was a valuable, if unfortunate, tool for suppressing terrorist groups. More recently, the opposite conclusion has gained much prominence in policy circles. A key turning point in the dialogue was the publication of the U.S. military’s new counterinsurgency doctrine manual in 2007. A central conclusion of this new doctrine was that respecting the rights of the local population was a critical component of successful counterterrorist and counterinsurgency policies. The rationale for this viewpoint was that violation of internationally recognized human rights creates widespread grievances against American forces and the indigenous governments they are supporting. Shortly thereafter, American and international military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan began placing a much higher priority on the provision of security and economic opportunities. But important unanswered questions about this relationship remain as well. In particular, it is not clear that a strategy aimed at countering insurgency will also be effective in stopping the actions of smaller andmore militant terrorist groups who are less reliant on support from the general population. These concerns span the traditional subfields of political science, and the contributions to this symposium draw on expertise in the areas of comparative politics, international relations, American government, and political philosophy.Our own article begins by summarizing what we do and do not know about the relationships between terrorism and human rights. We highlight two conclusions of recent research. The first is that, contrary to the concerns of many human rights advocates, governments do not always respond to terrorist attacks by restricting rights. It appears instead that the relationship is more complicated, with terrorist attacks prompting restrictions of some rights but not others. The second conclusion is that human rights abuses by governments are a powerful predictor of subsequent terrorist attacks. Our findings are preliminary, however, and in the remainder of the article, we suggest strategies that future research could use to gain a better understanding of how rights relate to terrorism. Our focus is on further disaggregating these two concepts and developing more granular data. In a brief empirical analysis, we show that disaggregating the concept of physical integrity rights into its four components—political imprisonment, torture, extrajudicial killings, and disappearances—allows us to