About Article

The first part of the paper seeks to identify the factors and dynamics of 'the new face' of international terrorism that must be factored into any counter-terrorism law and policy; it concludes, on this point, that the most important factor blunting an effective counter-terrorism law and policy is the blurring of the moral and political divides, as in the oft-repeated shibboleth that 'one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter'. The underlying thesis of the paper, then, is that terrorism must be seen for what it is - as the ultimate existential assault on human rights and human dignity and that the struggle against terrorism, therefore, must be seen as part of the longer struggle for human rights and human dignity, a principal which anchors the counter-terrorism law and policy proposal in the paper.