On December 16, 2025, the Center for Constitutional Rights sent a submission to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Counterterrorism and Human Rights to inform the thematic report on definitions of “terrorism”, “terrorist organisation,” and “violent extremism” to be presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council in March 2026.
Our submission primarily details how United States antiterrorism laws were created and shaped by specific anti-Palestinian agendas before the decisive shift to broader anti-Muslim animus after 2001. As the more notorious U.S. policies of the post-9/11 era—such as torture, indefinite detention, and targeted killing abroad—fade from public memory, these older antiterrorism laws have been normalized as a comparatively liberal baseline, their structurally anti-Palestinian character having been obscured in the meantime.
We also offer analysis that in a global context characterized by backsliding democracies and rising authoritarianism, which was in part fueled by the intentional expansion of the post-9/11 counterterrorism framework, there is an increasing dissonance between attempts to further entrench and define aspects of this framework and rhetoric condemning undemocratic actors, fighting authoritarianism, and reaffirming fundamental human rights. We share that the lived experience of the communities targeted by the counterterrorism framework clearly establishes that the framework itself is a fundamental source of persistent human rights violations. National and state-level antiterrorism laws are intended by design to be utilized to target politically disfavored individuals and groups specifically to exceptionally deny basic civil and political rights, including the right to life. Broadly, avoiding due process, denying fair trials, and justifying the arbitrary and often indefinite deprivation of a person’s liberty are the point. The counterterrorism framework has been routinely exploited to perpetrate murder, extrajudicial killing, forcible transfer, and atrocity crimes, including genocide.
We conclude by urging all United Nations Special Procedures mandate holders, including the Special Rapporteur on Counterterrorism and Human Rights, to interrogate and reassess the utility of any efforts that may result in further entrenching this dangerous and destructive counterterrorism framework that has helped usher in rising authoritarianism around the world and helped to smooth the way for multiple genocides with impunity, and to take all necessary measures to dismantle the counterterrorism framework and the ideologies that underpin war, detention, and impunity.
The Center for Constitutional Rights believes we must work collectively and urgently to dismantle this broader counterterrorism framework and the post-9/11 “national security” apparatus that has fundamentally altered not only the U.S. legal and political system, but has decimated the international human rights system, fostered rising authoritarianism globally, and smoothed the way for multiple genocides. We must shift global priorities and resources away from discriminatory systems and into programs, solutions, and institutions that center and bolster marginalized communities and protect rights in meaningful ways for communities most impacted by the counterterrorism framework and the post-9/11 authoritarian architecture.
Read the full submission below.
