The UNPO has submitted to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights an evaluation of the implementation of General Assembly Resolution 78/210 which stresses the importance of human rights considerations while combating terrorism. The UNPO submission expressed concerns about the worldwide trend of the misuse of the legal system to target civil society and silence dissent in both authoritarian regimes and countries that are generally considered to be governed by democratic institutions by referring to several UNPO member cases. It also expressed concerns about the great chilling effect this misuse has on the whole civil society of these members. Moreover, it stressed how the implementation of the resolution is hampered by the absence of an international definition of terrorism and emphasises the importance of an exclusionary clause. Furthermore, it pointed to the need for structural reform in regional and international organisations to avoid being used as a vehicle for the restriction of civic space of domestic civil society movements at the international level.
In the absence of a binding explicit international definition of terrorism, the power to define what is terrorism and what is not lies at state level. This has spurred a variety of different national definitions which continue to be stretched by means of regular amendments. Many of these definitions refer to vague terms like stability, territorial integrity, political unity, or sovereignty and are increasingly including non-violent civil activities. These stretched definitions are often accompanied by the broadening of general terrorist legislation.
This stretching of legal provisions has been used to target several UNPO members, among which the Kabyle people in Algeria, the Crimean Tatars in the Crimea, Sindh, Baloch, Gilgit-Baltistan activists in Pakistan, and the Catalan independence movement in Spain.
The submission also highlighted how, besides terrorism charges, other disproportionate charges like treason or sedition of other national security offences are being used to criminalize dissent and target civil society movements, as is happening in the case of Western Togoland.
The targeting of civil society movements has direct consequences such as prosecution and (pre-trial) detention, while also incurring great indirect consequences on individuals, movements, and the entire society. The misuse of the legal system to target civil society has a chilling effect in which people refrain from exercising their rights and practice self-censorship. Moreover, a terrorism accusation leads to the stigmatisation of civil society movements, both domestically and internationally, which leads to many restrictive consequences. Domestically, this may lead to restrictive measures on funding or an outright ban of a specific movement. Internationally, when stigmas are adopted by regional and international organisations, the international relations of movements and possible extensions for legal allowances are affected.
The adoption of national terrorism labels by regional or international organisations exposes how structural flaws within these organisations enable their member states to use regional and international institutions as a vehicle for restricting civic space within domestic civil society movements at the international level.
The submission concluded with the following recommendations:
- In light of the worldwide surge of the extreme right, all efforts should focus on opposing the concerning global trend of the misuse of the legal system to target civil society – both in authoritarian regimes and in countries generally considered to be governed by democratic institutions.
- States and international organisations should push for a legally binding, explicit definition of terrorism limited in scope and precise in wording, including an exception clause that prevents legitimate activities from being included.
- Regional and international organisations should consider structural reform to prevent being used as vehicles for the restriction of civic space, thereby constructing a more realistic organisational structure suited to an era in which authoritarian practices are on the rise.
