A quarter century later, we must recognize that “wars on terror” have undermined Human Rights and stretched the fundamental principles of international law to breaking point. Security and human rights must go hand in hand

United Nations Special Procedures

@UN_SPExperts

 

A quarter century later, we must recognize that “wars on terror” have undermined #HumanRights and stretched the fundamental principles of international law to breaking point. Security and human rights must go hand in hand - UN experts. See full statement: https://ohchr.org/en/statements-

 https://x.com/UN_SPExperts/status/2098433756491059327

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9/11 anniversary: A quarter century of global counter-terrorism has endangered human rights

11 September 2026

On today’s 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the United States of America, we pay tribute to the thousands of victims who lost their lives, to their families, and to the communities whose lives were forever changed by those horrific acts of violence. We equally acknowledge the millions of other victims worldwide of terrorist attacks, excessive counter-terrorism responses, and conflicts in the name of countering terrorism.

Terrorist violence causes profound human suffering, and every State has a duty to protect people from it and to uphold the right to life. We welcome that many governments have assisted and protected the victims of terrorism, and provided remedies, reparation and memorialization. Many countries have also strengthened security measures in ways that respect human rights.

Yet, too many governments have adopted unnecessary and disproportionate responses that have seriously undermined human rights, civil society, civic space, democracy, and the rule of law. Our worldwide monitoring over the past quarter century has exposed the gravest violations of international law in the name of countering terrorism. Wars of aggression. Unlawful occupations. Countless war crimes and crimes against humanity, and plausible allegations of genocide. Assassinations dressed up as “targeted killings”. Torture disguised as “interrogation”. Transboundary abductions, extraordinary renditions, and transnational repression. Secret detention and enforced disappearances. Unfair military trials and special courts, including at Guantanamo Bay. Toxic residues from conflicts have severely harmed human health.

“Wars on terror” have stretched foundational rules of international law beyond their breaking point, including excessive claims about national self-defence and what is permissible under international humanitarian, human rights and refugee law. State violence, foreign intervention, and impunity have counter-productively fuelled terrorism and insecurity locally and even globally, as with the spread of Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant after the 2003 aggression in Iraq.

State violations have also entrenched cycles of violence and impeded the just resolution of protracted conflicts in line with international law, as in the unlawfully occupied Palestinian territory.

Other violations have become almost routine in some countries, including the politicized abuse of overbroad terrorism and “extremism” laws, arbitrary detention, ill-treatment including inadequate health care, denial of fair trial before independent courts, the unjustified imposition of the death penalty and disproportionate penalties, and breaches of privacy and other basic rights. Exceptional temporary laws to address public emergencies have increasingly been made permanent.

Human rights have been further undermined by the arbitrary use of restrictive administrative measures. These include security detention, “control orders”, terrorist and “State terrorist” designations and sanctions (some of which affected whole populations), coercive “re-education”, travel bans, migration controls, citizenship revocation, and internet, communications and online content restrictions.

The use of new and emerging technologies, without adequate safeguards, is a key facilitator of violations. This includes drones, online and offline mass surveillance, spyware, biometric systems, and border security tools. Artificial intelligence and the automation of weapons systems pose heightened risks to the right to life and can undermine accountability. Businesses developing, supplying, or deploying these technologies should ensure that human rights are respected throughout their lifecycle, in line with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

Civil society has been heavily impacted by counter-terrorism measures, which have been used to target, harass, intimidate, threaten and silence many actors. These include human rights defenders, journalists, dissidents, environmental and land defenders, academics, scientists, artists, non-governmental organizations, social movements, minorities, Indigenous Peoples, peasants and migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. Civic space has been eroded by unjustified restrictions on the rights to freedom of expression, association, peaceful assembly, and the right to take part in public affairs.

Terrorism sanctions, financing laws and “support” offences, and bank de-risking and over-compliance, have led to over-regulation of non-profit organizations, contrary to the risk-based, proportionate approach required under international standards. Such measures have impeded and deterred impartial humanitarian activities in conflict zones, preventing assistance to civilians and undermining economic, social and cultural rights. Security Council and Financial Action Task Force standards have not adequately mitigated these risks and have been misused by some States to restrict civil society.

Counter-terrorism measures have violated the rights of vulnerable groups, including by failing to recognize children as victims of terrorist groups, consider their best interests, provide for their rehabilitation and reintegration, detain them only as last resort and for the shortest possible time, and use specialized juvenile justice processes. Women have experienced differential impacts of counter-terrorism and gendered assumptions about their agency as perpetrators, victims, and participants in counter-terrorism and civil society. Religious, racial and ethnic profiling has victimized some groups.

The Security Council has been part of the problem, by requiring all States to adopt highly intrusive measures without defining terrorism, guaranteeing safeguards, or effectively enforcing international law.

The sheer number, breadth, and invasive nature of counter-terrorism measures has strengthened repression and authoritarianism, in an era of backsliding on human rights and democracy. State violations not only cannot defeat terrorism, but can breed it. They also deny justice to victims of terrorism.

We urge States to review their counter-terrorism laws and practices to comply with international human rights, humanitarian, and refugee law, to establish effective independent oversight and accountability mechanisms to prevent and effectively remedy violations, and to protect and assist victims of terrorism and of unlawful counter-terrorism measures alike.

We also call on States to more meaningfully address the conditions conducive to terrorism under the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy. Trillions of dollars have been spent on highly securitized responses, yet terrorism is more prevalent, in more places, than before 9/11. The world must adequately fund long-term initiatives to prevent terrorism, by prioritizing conflict resolution and peace building, good governance and political inclusion, the rule of law, sustainable development, humanitarian assistance, and human rights for all.

 https://www.ohchr.org/en/statements-and-speeches/2026/09/911-anniversary-quarter-century-global-counter-terrorism-has

"In Gaza, Palestinian journalists filming on their phones have provided an indispensable record of a war foreign reporters have largely been prevented from entering. There, picking up a camera is an act of extraordinary courage." Phoebe Greenwood

A man takes pictures of demolished houses in Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank in 2023. Photograph: Mussa Issa Qawasma/Reuters

Sunsets, disasters, dinners: we now record them all with our phones. But what is that doing to our souls? 

As a war correspondent, I worked with photographers who said the camera was a buffer between them and reality. It is much the same now as we snap and scroll 

 

Phoebe Greenwood 

Sat 29 Aug 2026

I was sitting on a rooftop in Athens at sunset looking up at Filopappou hill. Athens in August is burning hot. Not so much hotter than London or Paris any more, but the sort of hot that makes it foolish to step out into sunlight before 6pm. Emerging from the air conditioning at dusk, I saw a dense line of silhouettes on the ridge above me. Almost every one of these shadows had its arm raised, holding a cameraphone towards the sunset.

Of all the pretty hills in the Greek capital, Filopappou arguably has the best view. The Acropolis stands directly to its north. To its south, where I sat, the city sprawls out towards the sea and a dark horizon of islands – Aegina, Salamina, Agistri.

Looking up, the wall of tourist photographers reminded me of something: war zones.

I worked as a correspondent covering conflicts and disasters for the Guardian and other newspapers for more than a decade. Over time, every new disaster came to resemble the last: another catastrophic tableau of buildings and bodies with a dense ring of telephoto lenses pointed at it.

Print reporters like me could stay at a distance from the gore and the horror because we could describe it. The photographers had to get as close as possible because they needed a clean shot.

Later, when I asked them about their work over beers at the American Colony hotel bar or tea at Gaza’s now-destroyed Al Deira hotel – how could they do it? Spend their days gazing at suffering? – most said the same thing. The lens was a buffer, a sort of protective forcefield. They weren’t looking at the fatally injured child, they were looking at the image of one.

The illustrious war photographer Don McCullin was wise to the danger in this distance. “I operate not as a photographer but as a human being,” he said in 1983, 16 years before the first cameraphone. “I try to balance what I photograph not as a photographer but as a person, a man, and photography has got nothing to do with it. It is just something I have learned, it is just a way of communicating.”... READ MORE   https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/aug/29/sunsets-disasters-dinners-record-phones-camera-reality 

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AI-Enabled Weapons Systems- As Artificial Intelligence moves onto the battlefield, UN Secretary-General António Guterres has shared his deep concern about the potentially disastrous consequences. Describing the taking of human life by AI weapons as “morally repugnant,” the Secretary-General has stressed: “Some decisions must remain forever human — none more than taking a human life.”

“It’s time to come clean.”

UN Secretary-General outlines risks and opportunities of a future with AI

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has urged world leaders, technology companies, and others to work together to ensure the safe use of Artificial Intelligence.

The Secretary-General warned that without greater international cooperation, the technology could widen global inequality instead of advancing sustainable development. The unregulated usage of AI has direct impacts on our environment, children, and weapons systems that are developing at a rapid pace without close human oversight.

The Secretary-General said that nations must come together to increase the safety of Artificial Intelligence, while mitigating its detrimental impacts in four critical areas.

The Environment

AI is hungry for land, water and power, and the data centers behind it already consume more electricity than most nations.

By 2030, they could use more power than all but five countries — and enough water to meet the basic needs of all 1.3 billion residents of sub‑Saharan Africa for an entire year.

Despite these obvious concerns, communities are often uninformed about the environmental impact of the infrastructure rising around them.

In response, the Secretary-General has proposed the AI Environmental Transparency Initiative, calling on every major AI company to measure and publicly disclose the full environmental impact of its systems — carbon, water, and land footprints — and to commit to powering every data centre with renewable energy by 2030.

Child Safety  

... READ MORE   https://medium.com/we-the-peoples/its-time-to-come-clean-fb1db296b5e9?postPublishedType=initial

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Trump wants $1.5tn for the Pentagon – and cuts to healthcare and housing. The president’s proposed $445bn increase in military spending would batter popular domestic programs as millions struggle

In seeking a mammoth increase in military spending while cutting social programs, Trump is again showing how hollow his promises were about making life better for typical Americans.’ Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

Steven Greenhouse

 

 

 

 

 Tue 21 Apr 2026 

With Americans focused on Donald Trump’s deeply unpopular war against Iran, far too few Americans are focusing on another disastrous Trump idea: increasing the Pentagon’s budget to a colossal $1.5tn. Just as Trump’s Iran war has hurt millions of Americans by sending gas prices skyward, Trump’s supersized Pentagon budget will hurt millions of Americans because Trump, to help finance that budget, is pushing for painful cuts in health, education, and housing programs.

By proposing a record-breaking $445bn increase in military spending, Trump is showing he’s gung-ho for guns, but not for butter, even though millions of Americans are struggling financially and are eager for more butter – social spending – to make their lives easier. Trump’s proposed military budget would mean a spectacular jump – it would be 42% above this year’s budget and two-thirds bigger than Joe Biden’s last Pentagon budget. Asserting that human needs are woefully underfunded, a coalition of 289 groups denounced Trump’s “gigantic” increase as “grossly irresponsible”, especially since the US already spends more on its military than the next nine biggest defense-spending countries combined.

Trump evidently wants this $445bn increase so he can thump his chest even more about the US’s military might and brag about all the shiny, new hardware he is building, especially the new Trump-class “Golden Fleet” battleships named after you-know-who. (Those battleships will cost an astonishing $9bn to $13bn each.) Beyond that $445bn jump in military spending, let’s not forget that Trump wants Congress to approve a separate $200bn for his not-so-successful war against Iran.

 Trump’s Pentagon spending spree could prove disastrous in several ways. To help fund his increase, Trump is seeking a 10% cut in discretionary domestic spending, chopping such popular programs as medical research, job training, home heating assistance, environmental protection and disaster relief after hurricanes. After all the grievous damage that Trump has already done to government programs, the public doesn’t want more cuts – it wants increased spending on healthcare and other social programs.... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/21/trump-military-pentagon-budget  

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Pope Leo urged "those who have the power to unleash wars" to chose peace. This should not be a peace “imposed by force”, he stressed, but one achieved through dialogue – “not with the desire to dominate others, but to encounter them”.

Pope Leo processes into St Peter's Basilica   (@Vatican Media)

https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2026-04/pope-leo-easter-vigil-hatred-mighty-sin-resurrection.html

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Pope: Easter drives out hatred and brings down the mighty

At the Easter Vigil Mass in the Vatican, Pope Leo says that “God responds to the hardness of sin – which divides and kills – with the power of love, which unites and restores life”... 

War, injustice, and isolation

In the final portion of his homily, Pope Leo reflected on the “tombs still to be opened today”, such as “mistrust, fear, selfishness, and resentment”, as well as “war, injustice, and the isolation of peoples and nations”.

The Pope exhorted his listeners to not allow themselves to be “paralysed” in the face of such challenges.

Instead, he said, we should imitate the “commitment” of the saints who have gone before us, so that “the Easter gifts of harmony and peace might grow and flourish everywhere and always throughout the world”... 

Flowers in St Peter's Square during the Urbi et Orbi blessing   (@Vatican Media)

Urbi et Orbi: Pope urges world leaders to lay down weapons

On Easter Sunday, Pope Leo appeals to world leaders to choose “not to dominate others, but to encounter them”. He also announces that he will lead a prayer vigil for peace next Saturday, April 11th, in Saint Peter’s Basilica. 

By Joseph Tulloch

Pope Leo XIV has called on world leaders to lay down their weapons and choose “encounter” over domination.

“Let those who have weapons lay them down!”, the Pope urged on Easter Sunday in his traditional Urbi et Orbi (‘To the City and the World’) message.

Speaking to the tens of thousands of pilgrims gathered in St Peter's Square, Pope Leo urged "those who have the power to unleash wars" to chose peace. 

This should not be a peace “imposed by force”, he stressed, but one achieved through dialogue – “not with the desire to dominate others, but to encounter them”.

READ THE FULL TEXT OF THE URBI ET ORBI MESSAGE

The 'globalisation of indifference'

Pope Leo warned that the world is “growing accustomed to violence”.

We are “becoming indifferent”, he said, not only to the deaths of thousands of people, but to the “hatred and division” war causes, as well as its “economic and social consequences”.

Borrowing a phrase from the late Pope Francis, Pope Leo warned of the “ever-increasing ‘globalisation of indifference’”.

“We cannot continue to be indifferent!”, he urged. “We cannot resign ourselves to evil!”.

For this reason, he said, he would be leading a prayer vigil for peace next Saturday, April 11th, in St Peter’s Basilica.

Nonviolence and 'true strength'

At Easter, the Pope said, Jesus won victory over death, and thereby “defeated once and for all the ancient adversary, the prince of this world”.

However, Pope Leo stressed, the power with which Christ won this victory is “entirely nonviolent”, based on a love which “creates and generates”, “forgives and redeems”.

This spirit of love and forgiveness, he said, is the “true strength” that establishes peace, and fosters relationships amongst individuals and societies.

Inner peace

Bringing his Urbi et Orbi message to a close, the Pope stressed that Easter peace is not merely “the silence of weapons” but also an inner peace which “touches and transforms the heart of each one of us”.

“Let us allow ourselves to be transformed by the peace of Christ”, Pope Leo urged, entrusting to the Lord "all hearts that suffer and await the true peace that only he can give.”

 https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2026-04/pope-leo-urbi-et-orbi-easter-2026-peace-weapons-war-dialogue.html

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