| dc.description.abstract | While the UN Security Council has generally been at center stage in directing responses to twenty-first-century international terrorism, including through the questionable expansion of its own legislative powers, its role in defining terrorism has remained limited. This primarily passive approach has not been without problems. By requiring states to take decisive action against “terrorism” while not making clear what terrorism is, the Security Council has in fact encouraged abusive and human-rights-hostile policies where individual states may use whatever means they have to go after political opposition, trade unions, or religious, ethnic, separatist, or indigenous minorities, by stigmatizing them as terrorists.While the UN Security Council has generally been at center stage in directing responses to twenty-first-century international terrorism, including through the questionable expansion of its own legislative powers, its role in defining terrorism has remained limited. This primarily passive approach has not been without problems. By requiring states to take decisive action against “terrorism” while not making clear what terrorism is, the Security Council has in fact encouraged abusive and human-rights-hostile policies where individual states may use whatever means they have to go after political opposition, trade unions, or religious, ethnic, separatist, or indigenous minorities, by stigmatizing them as terrorists. | en |