Protecting human rights in the era of uncertainty: How not to lose the war against ISIS

ABSTRACT

As the brutal and violent attacks on civilian populations multiply throughout the world perpetrated by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS or ISIL, or the Islamic State, also known as Daesh), the need for an effective response to terrorism has grown in intensity. The ISIS attacks in Paris have in particular introduced a wave of nationalist, securitized alarm, reinforcing a general concern about the influx of immigrants and asylum seekers while underscoring the shift from a regional to international nature of both threat and risk. These issues of security and terrorism have also illustrated the willingness of great powers to support military actions against ISIS in order to stem the atrocities perpetrated by this group, while placing the overthrow of the Assad regime on the backburner for the time being at least. We argue that the defeat of ISIS need not be accomplished by stigmatizing refugees and subjecting them to religious litmus tests. Closing Europe's porous borders and politicizing the attempt to admit refugees at a time when the growing humanitarian crisis poses mounting human rights challenges to the international community is fundamentally wrongheaded. We argue that these approaches, while temporarily satisfying, strengthen the hand of ISIS and other terrorist groups that tend to portray such policies and practices largely in terms of civilizational clashes. Defeating ISIS requires strategic patience and long-term logical and prudent decision making. While doing so, it is important to avoid the enemy's repressive, atavistic, and unsavory methods. The burden is on the international community to fulfill the commitment to international human rights law and international humanitarian law, which continue to be one of the most effective and legitimate tools in our arsenal to confront terrorism.

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Notes on contributors

Mahmood Monshipouri

Mahmood Monshipouri (PhD) is Professor of International Relations at San Francisco State University. He is also a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Democratic Uprisings in the New Middle East: Youth, Technology, Human Rights, and US Foreign Policy (Boulder, CO: Routledge, 2014). He is the editor, most recently, of Information Politics, Protests, and Human Rights in a Digital Age (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016) and Inside the Islamic Republic: Social Change in the Post-Khomeini Iran (New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).

Claude E. Welch

Claude E. Welch, Jr. (PhD, Oxford) is a SUNY Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science. He specializes in African politics and civil-military relations. He is the author or editor of more than a dozen books. His books include Protecting Human Rights in Africa: Strategies and Roles of Non-Governmental Organizations (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995) and NGOs and the Human Rights: Promise and Performance (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001). He is the Director of the Human Rights Center of SUNY-Buffalo. Several of his previous articles have appeared in Human Rights Quarterly, dealing with the African Commission on Human Rights and Peoples' Rights, the rights of African women, and on the issues of international human rights and justice in the post-Cold War era.

Khashayar Nikazmrad

Khashayar Nikazmrad is a Research Assistant at the Political Science Department, University of California, Berkeley. Nikazmrad holds a BA in Political Science.