HUMAN RIGHTS AND TERRORISM


arrangements for legislative supervision of all such forces, services and activities. By the Constitution, the people of Ghana solemnly declared and affirmed a commitment to probity and accountability, and the principle that all powers of Government spring from the Sovereign Will of the People.


The Will of the people in Ghana is expressed through their representatives elected to parliament under the Constitution.


Beyond the vesting of legislative power in parliament under article 93 (2) of the Constitution, parliament is further enjoined under article 103 to appoint standing committees and other committees that are necessary for the effective discharge of its duties. Committees appointed in parliament pursuant to the above constitutional provision are charged:


“[With] such functions, including the investigation and inquiry into activities and administration of ministries and departments as Parliament may determine; and such investigation and inquiries may extend to proposals for legislation.”17 The power to investigate and inquire into the activities and administration of ministries and departments is sufficiently broad to cover what in common parlance is often referred to as parliamentary oversight. There are other parliamentary tools such as statements made on the floor of the house on specific issues and parliamentary questions asked of Ministers on activities of their ministries, which constitutes aspects of oversight. Article 110 of the


Constitution enjoins parliament to regulate its own procedure by means of Standing Orders. Pursuant to this provision the Standing Orders of the Parliament of Ghana were made and revised in 2000. Part 20 of the Standing


Orders has constituted Standing and Select Committees for the conduct of parliamentary business. Order 52 (j) provides for the Select Committee on Defence and Interior. It is the Committee which addresses issues of the security sector. The Committee consists of 18 members and has the mandate to “examine all questions relating to Defence and internal affairs.” 18 This mandate of the Select Committee on Defence and Interior is problematic if viewed against the backdrop of emerging regional and sub- regional blocs which address trans-border security issues.


Conclusion


I have deliberately focused on the nexus between the war on terror and fundamental human rights for a number of reasons. First, those prosecuting


the ‘war on’ (Baxi describes as aggressive incumbents) are of states with known rules of engagement either of constitutional or legislative generis. Secondly, most of the leaders of such states were constituted by the will of the people through universal adult suffrage and can and should be held accountable. Lastly, as opposed to those prosecuting the ‘war of terror’ described by Baxi as nomadic insurgents, a distinction needs to be made between otherwise terrorist acts by ‘within-nation’ insurgence in liberation struggles or struggles for self-determination and ‘cross-nations’ terrorists activities of a global nature. In lieu of a prototype conclusion, I bring back by way of concluding remarks the complexities and human rights implications of the ‘war of terror’. An important question to pose is how international lawyers and law persons can make sense of the relationship between ‘terror’ and human rights? Put another way, is deliberate infliction of indiscriminate violence by


insurgent non-state actors against civilian populations and sites ever justified as a means of restoring their own human rights estates? This question I agree with Baxi is better addressed by his illuminating strategic discourse. First, that there is the need to distinguish the ‘perspectives’ of such violent recourse from those who are directly or indirectly harmed or hurt by them. A victim oriented perspective suggests that terrorist’s violence cannot be justified. Second, that human rights as a whole ought not to be advanced by recourse to collective violence - a notion of ‘ethical peace.


Third and most significantly, is the context-sensitive aspects of the debate which raises questions of justification of terrorist violence in terms of ‘within-nation’ insurgent violence and its ‘cross-nations’ global practices.19


There are influential voices to the effect that ‘within-nation’ terrorist recourse to violence may be justified in terms of what Allen Buchana calls the ‘problematic morality of secession’ as well as the context of activities of decolonization movements.20 Virginia Held is of the view that “… if we might have rights violations, a more equitable distribution of such violations is better than a less equitable distribution”.21


A useful position from the narratives so far is that ‘within- nation’ insurgence may be justified in situations such as the practices of the former apartheid state formations but ‘cross-nations’ acts from fatwas remains unjustifiable in the context of human rights. Given the fact that many national anti-terrorism legislation including that of Ghana excludes ‘within-nation’ acts from the definition of terrorism, it is obvious that the ‘war on terror’ is likely to re-write international law in fundamental ways.


References: 1


This distinction is taken from Upendra Baxi’s article “The War on Terror and the War of Terror: Nomadic Multitude, Aggressive Incumbents, and New International Law: Prefatory Remarks on Two Wars”, in Osgoode Hall Law Journal,


Vol. 43 No. 1/2. 2


Ibid.


Joint Statement by Mary Robinson, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Walter


3


Schwimmer, Secretary General of the Council of Europe and Ambassador Gerard Stoudmann, Director of OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights. 29


November 2001 4


‘Global Strategy for fighting terrorism’, Keynote Address to the closing Plenary of the International Summit on Democracy, Terrorism and


Security, 8 – 11th March, 2005, Madrid. 5


(03-6696) 542 US 507, 2004.


UN General Assembly, Report of the Ad hoc Committee Established by the General Assembly Resolution 51/210 of 17th December 1996,


6


6th Session, Doc. 7/57/37. 7


Thalif Deen, (2005) POLITICS: UN Member States Struggle to Define Terrorism, IPS, and 25th July


2005. 8


762). 9


10 11 12 13


14 15 16 Anti-Terrorism Act, 2008 (Act


See section 4 of Act 762. Ibid, section 2 (2). Ibid, section 41.


Ibid, see section 34. Act 749.


Ibid, section 1.


Republic v. Kennedy Adjepong, 2012 Edusei v. Attorney-General


[1996-97] SCGLR 1 17


Article 103 (3). 18 See Order 158 of the Standing


Orders of the Parliament of Ghana. 19


Supra, pp. 16 – 19.


Secession: The Morality of Political Divorce from Fort Sumter to Lithuania and Quebec, Boulder, Colo:


20


Westview Press, 1991. 21


“Terrorism, Rights and Political Goals”, in R. G.Frey & Christopher W. Morris eds, in Violence, Terrorism, and Justice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991 at p. 80


The Parliamentarian | 2015: Issue Two | 89


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