Wednesday, September 23, 2026
News and Views from the Global South
RIGHTS: War on Terrorism Threatens Liberties, Warns UN
Gustavo Capdevila
- A look at the terror attacks against New York and Washington in light of human rights elicited unanimous expressions of condemnation by United Nations experts Tuesday, but also of concern about the fate of the Afghan population and about the effectiveness of civil rights laws around the world.
“This is a difficult time for human rights and civil liberties,” said Mary Robinson, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, who characterised the Sep 11 terrorist attacks as “crimes against humanity.”
The UN official said she shares the fears expressed by civil society organisations that the reaction of governments against terrorism will result in an erosion of respect for human and civil rights.
An informal meeting of the UN Commission on Human Rights, held Tuesday in Geneva, focused on the terror attacks on the United States and their impacts.
The session of the UN’s maximum authority on human rights found that there is universal awareness about the gravity of the attacks, and unmitigated solidarity with the United States, summarised the chair of the Commission, Leandro Despouy, of Argentina.
With respect to the potential US response to the attacks, the people of that central Asian country “are facing a terrible situation,” said Despouy, citing the Commission debate and, in particular, a report by the special rapporteur on Afghanistan.
Kamal Hossain, the UN-designated rapporteur for evaluating human rights in Afghanistan, presented his account, which describes “the historically complex” situation in that country.
Hossain, former minister of foreign relations for Bangladesh, said that the Afghan people, already devastated by decades of war, are now the victim of the fundamentalist Islamic regime of the Taliban and at the same time are living under the threat of a possible military attack by the United States.
Robinson commented, “I think that it is fair to say that there is not a more vulnerable population in the world at the moment than the population of Afghanistan.”
The UN’s humanitarian agencies working in that country calculate that five million people – of a total population of some 22 million – currently depend on international assistance for survival.
Sixty percent of Afghan women and children are faced with this terrible reality, stated Robinson as she issued an appeal to halt “this already apparent humanitarian catastrophe.”
The UN-recognised delegation from Afghanistan is made up of groups opposed to the Taliban and went before the Commission on Human Rights with its concerns about the fate of the population.
The Afghan people were in no way implicated in the terrorist attacks, stressed the delegation.
The UN human rights experts gathered Tuesday agreed that the authors of the Sep 11 attacks had perpetrated crimes against humanity.
The statutes of the International Criminal Court define crimes against humanity as large-scale and deliberate attacks on the civilian population.
Robinson said these elements existed in the attacks in Washington and New York in “the fact that civilian aircraft would be hijacked with full fuel tanks and deliberately directed against buildings housing thousands of innocent civilians.”
The High Commissioner stressed that the reaction of the international community had immediately aligned to support the UN and the United States in bringing those responsible for the crime to justice.
However, Robinson observed that there are legitimate concerns about the international coalition that is being formed to fight terrorism.
The results of a meeting last week of justice and interior ministers from European countries could bode for a further erosion of certain liberties on the continent, she said.
Another consequence, Robinson added, could be a “harsher climate and context for refugees and asylum-seekers (in Europe). In other words, potentially a further hardening of the fortress mentality.”
In the name of tackling terrorism, it would “make life more difficult for the vulnerable members of populations who desperately seek to escape the hard realities of their lives” in their home countries, she pointed out.
The High Commissioner said she had encountered similar concerns among civil society organisations in the United States when she met with them on a recent visit, after the terrorist attacks.
There is a great deal of alarm about proposed changes to US immigration laws, which call for allowing suspects to be detained for an unlimited period and even held on secret evidence, with officials claiming national security reasons.
“I have no doubt that there are countries that are gearing up to tackle terrorism by clamping down on human rights defenders,” Robinson lamented.
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RIGHTS: War on Terrorism Threatens Liberties, Warns UN
Gustavo Capdevila
- A look at the terror attacks against New York and Washington in light of human rights elicited unanimous expressions of condemnation by United Nations experts Tuesday, but also of concern about the fate of the Afghan population and about the effectiveness of civil rights laws around the world.
(more…)
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