Middle east, Human Rights, Arab states 

This chapter provides an overview of legislative developments in Arab states following the passage of Security Council Resolution 1373, focusing on definitions of ‘terrorism’ and ‘terrorist offences’. It considers the Arab Convention for the Suppression of Terrorism before proceeding to review the responses of a number of individual states. Moves at the beginning of the century towards political reform and the opening of public space for dissent and criticism are challenged by the exigencies of the ‘war on terror’. Certain practices in violation of human rights in Arab states have apparently been endorsed by the US alongside a stated policy focus on ‘democratisation’ in the region. Dissonance between law-related word
and deed of the states leading the global counter-terrorism ef ort – particularly
the United States, but also the United Kingdom – sustains the arguments of those who seek to undermine the discourse of rights and rule of law, complicates the considerable challenges posed to local and regional human rights groups, and seriously undermines the credibility of international law in the region; the efficacy of all of which in the ‘global war on terrorism’ must surely be open to question. 

34 p.; 28 cm