Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights: An Analysis

The act of terrorism is an act against humanity has a major repercussion on human rights. Terrorism causes many concerns with respect to the security of nations and its citizens. There is also a major negative impact on the development of nations and the prosperity of its citizens as well due to terrorism. Apart from human rights, terrorism poses a threat to rule of law and democracy as well. The act of achieving an ideological or political goal through terrorism, always puts human rights at stake. This paper focuses on how terrorism and the measures taken to counter it impacts human rights by taking the various terrorist attacks that have occurred throughout time as examples. For instance, the attack on the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2000 or be it the instance of Taj attack in Mumbai in November 2008. Due to the large number of terrorist attacks that have taken place over the course of time, many countries have taken counter measures to fight against terrorism and have introduced many laws for the same, such as the 1967 Unlawful Activities Prevention Act in India, The Patriot Act in the United States, The Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Act in the United Kingdom, etc., to fight off terrorism. Apart from the laws passed for countering terrorism, there are many conventions that are also made for the same. This paper focuses on analyzing these measures in order to determine whether they are in accordance to the human rights guaranteed to people across the world. This paper also tries to determine whether the counter terrorism measures provide a favorable outcome in preventing terrorism or negatively impacts human rights.