The UNPO has submitted a report to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Counterterrorism and Human Rights warning of the accelerating misuse of counterterrorism legislation to justify human rights violations against unrepresented and marginalised communities worldwide. This submission responds directly to the Special Rapporteur’s call for inputs to define terrorism to inform their upcoming thematic report to the Human Rights Council in March 2026.
The submission, titled “The Misuse of Counterterrorism Measures to Justify Human Rights Violations Against Unrepresented and Marginalised Communities,” documents how states increasingly deploy vague, politicised, and overly broad definitions of “terrorism,” “violent extremism,” and “extremism” to criminalise peaceful dissent and suppress legitimate self-determination movements. This follows UNPO’s submission earlier this year, which assessed the implementation of UN General Assembly Resolution 78/210 and similarly documented how vague definitions of terrorism, including “stability,” “territorial integrity,” and “politically unity” have been utilised by national governments to target non-violent civil activities. Building on this work, this submission draws on the experiences of UNPO member communities, including the Catalans (Spain), the Kabyle (Algeria), the Crimean Tatars (Russia), the people of Western Togoland (Ghana), West Papuans (Indonesia), the Uyghur and Tibetan communities (China), and Sindhi, Baloch, Pashtun, and Gilgit-Baltistan communities (Pakistan).
The submission details direct consequences of this trend, including arbitrary arrests, detention, surveillance, travel restrictions, and in some cases, enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings. It also highlights the chilling effect on societies, where individuals and organisations are dissuaded from exercising their fundamental rights out of fear of legal repercussions. Finally, the submission touches upon the way in which domestic applications of “terrorism,” “violent extremism” and “extremism” can additionally stigmatise the legitimacy of civil society movements, weakening their global partnerships and hindering their legal recognition both at home and abroad.
UNPO’s statement urges the Special Rapporteur to call on states to adopt narrow and rights-compliant definitions of terrorism that protect peaceful expression, association, and self-determination. The submission further stresses the need to recognise state-perpetrated terrorism and ensure accessible avenues of redress for individuals and communities targeted under counterterrorism laws.
Together with the UNPO’s submission to the UN Special Rapporteur, a report on the use of legal warfare as a tool of repression has also been published. This report examines how lawfare, particularly the misuse of vague and broad counterterrorism, treason, and sedition laws, is increasingly used to suppress civil society and self-determination movements. It too calls for a binding international legal definition of terrorism to protect pluralist democracy and safeguard civic space.
