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March 9, 2005

Plenary: Preliminary Conclusions of the Working Groups

The first part of the Summit closed with a plenary in which the conclusions from each of the working groups were presented by their coordinators. They took on the responsibility of analyzing the terrorist phenomenon from all its possible aspects, with the aim of offering the widest possible explanation. Actually, there were also many common points of view making it possible to come close to a consensus on a concrete definition of terrorism. The Secretary General of the Club of Madrid, Kim Campbell emphasized the fact that this work had been done by 200 experts from all over the world.

Dr. Peter R. Neuman, director of the content of the Summit, revealed the existence of 16 working groups which had been working for many months prior to the Summit, making it the biggest and most in-depth conference to date to be convened around the theme of security and terrorism.

Louise Richardson, summarised the findings of her working groups whose job it was to analyse the underlying causes of terrorism: individual and political, economic, cultural, religious, and even individual. Richardson emphasized that terrorism does not originate in one isolated cause, but rather in the interaction of all of them. She also reiterated that terror is a tactic used to achieve an ends, rather than existing as an end in itself.

Ray Kendall was appointed to coordinate the groups that studied how to confront terrorism through means of intelligence agencies, policing, military responses, and controlling terrorist finance. He agreed with his colleagues on the fact that the treatment of the phenomenon is not simple but rather complex. For Kendall, it is important to focus on the process, that is actually quite short, one that goes from a local conflict to a full-blown terrorist action. In this sense, Kendall thinks that the UN should be the body through which an adequate solution can be found.

Phil Bobbit, spoke about the possible democratic answers to terrorism. He started off by trying to define it and shorten it. He also pointed out that protection of civil society is fundamental to avoiding terrorists to act with impunity in the environment that they pretend to defend. He also asked for more transparency in those sovereign states in which there is little respect for human rights, and for the guarantee of individual rights in the fight against terrorism.

Miguel Darcy and Mary Kaldor, co-coordinators of the working groups with the common theme of Civil Society, defined some basic principles and called for a strategy of action based on those principles. Both pointed out that although terrorism is a global phenomenon, root causes are usually found at the local level; and terrorism is born both in conflict zones and under authoritarian regimes, proving that both non state terrorism and a terrorism that is paramilitary exist. One third finding is that democratic order, although it is necessary to establish stability, cannot be implemented with force. Finally, the groups of Darcy as well as Kaldor put forth Madrid as an example of an appropriate answer to terrorism, and an example that should be followed. With respect to a recommended strategy they insisted in support of civil society as a form of “ soft power.”

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Kim Campbell
Ladies and gentlemen, señoras y señores, can I ask you to come and take your seats so we can begin our plenary. Please come and take your seats. The plenary will be conducted in English to simplify the translation, so for those who do not speak English there are headphones as you come into the room. However, if you don’t speak English you wont understand my instructions, so perhaps the English speakers can tell them that there are translation headphones as you come into the room.

Fernando Henrique Cardoso
Good morning ladies and gentleman. Please sit down. We are starting this plenary session and I must say to you that on behalf of the Club of Madrid, this is the fundamental work we have to accomplish.

It is to take into account the results of the working groups as well as the results of the plenary sessions. As you can imagine it is not easy to put together so important a group of people and to make you produce said results. We are very happy with the outcome. We believe that the sense of responsibility, the challenge we are facing is so important that it’s a kind of re-energising process.

This morning, as you know, we are here to listen to you. I will ask Kim Campbell to take over the leadership of the meeting and then each one of the rapporteurs will try to explain the main results you got during these working days. And in a few minutes, not just Kim Campbell but also Peter Neuman, who is in charge of the drafting committee, will explain to you the whole process in which we are involved and the basic results we have. He will also explain how you proceeded in your efforts and will really take into account what has been proposed by you. You must imagine how difficult it is to translate this enormous process into a certain number of pages. Our Madrid agenda cannot be a huge volume. It has to be a short document stressing what the most important conclusions were. But I assure you that the Club of Madrid will take into account all your contributions. We are also ready to publish individual contributions and the results of your discussions. We will try to put them on the website as well. We have some publishers and editors available to see what can be done with the results of your work. In advance I would like to say to you that it would be impossible to put each one of your recommendations on the main list of recommendations as sponsored by the Club of Madrid. But this is not to say that we are not taking into account the whole effort you made. So in order to be brief I will ask Kim Campbell to replace me here and to try to give more order to our discussions. Thank you very much. Kim.

Kim Campbell
Thank you Fernando Henrique and just to repeat, we are all going to be speaking in English. “Los audios para la traducción están en la puerta”. Maybe you could help those who speak less English.

This is a wonderful transition moment in our summit because this is the symbolic conclusion of the work of our working groups, this group of almost 200 scholars from around the world who have been working over many months to deliberate on major issues that will become the foundation of the Madrid agenda. In Madrid they have been drawing conclusions from their deliberations, all coming together for the first time in the process. They have been meeting on the Internet but they are coming together face to face to try and translate the in depth discussions they’ve been having, into concrete recommendations.

And at this plenary they will report to you and symbolically and physically transfer to Fernando Henrique Cardoso, the President of the Club of Madrid, the results of their findings and we are very proud of what they have done.

It is also a transition because we are moving now into the phase of high level panels. And I can just say that when we began to plan this meeting we sent many invitations to experts around the world but thinking that there was very little time to plan a conference to mark the anniversary of March 11th, that many people of those we wanted to come would not be able to attend. And so many people were invited and they assumed that they would be giving a key note address at a conference in Madrid. So many of these wonderful experts, practitioners, knowledgeable and wise people from around the world, wanted to be part of this conversation, that we realised unless we had a conference of 2 or 3 weeks they could not all give key note addresses. And so instead we have created high level panels and I think the experience of this morning has shown what a fortuitous decision that was, because the dynamics of having several very knowledgeable, very brilliant, very strong minded people discussing something they feel passionately about and know a great deal about, is even more exciting than an excellent key note address.

So we are now in the day and a half of really dynamic and interesting high level panels and tomorrow afternoon we will have very interesting plenaries where we will hear from the President of the European Commission and the Secretary General of the United Nations.

So this is a dynamic time and more people are coming in. We have members of the public who are now invited and I would just like to say a very special welcome to a group of students from around Europe who have come here. They are students from eastern Europe, the Ukraine and western Europe, who are meeting here in Madrid and who have joined us because what are we talking about, if not the future, and what is the point of those of us who are well into our maturity having these discussions if we do not remember that it is the young leaders of tomorrow who will have to take these ideas and translate them into policies. I wonder if I could just ask the European students who are here as part of our community to stand so we can give you a special welcome.

{clapping}

And I’m sure there are a few others who are still lingering over the cookies there.

It now gives me great pleasure to introduce Doctor Peter Neuman, who has had the task of creating the working group panels that have been working so hard over the past few months. And again when we talk of new leaders of tomorrow, Peter Neuman is not only enormously astute and competent, he is remarkably young and we feel that in fact he will probably be around for several generations and iterations of such conferences because he so young. He is living proof that youth is no barrier to wisdom, competence and great skill, and we have been very lucky in the international summit to have him as the head of our working group process and I would now like to invite Peter Neuman to tell you a little bit more about it.
Peter.

Doctor Peter R. Neuman
Thank you very much, one day I might even become a member of the Club of Madrid but there is still a long time to go before then.

Members of the Club of Madrid, ladies and gentlemen. It was a novelist from Madrid who once wrote that when something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing. Whether it will be possible to read the Madrid agenda without effort is for you to decide on Friday, when that document will be published. That great effort has gone into its writing however is beyond doubt.

Over the past four and a half months, more that 200 experts from 52 countries around the world from all five continents have worked in 16 groups to find ways of how to fight terrorism and preserve and enhance democracy at the same time. They were academics, but not only academics, there were also practitioners, police men, religious leaders, grass roots activists, intelligence agents, diplomats and even a few psychiatrists and medical doctors.

Now the experts themselves, and I spoke to many of them yesterday, said that this was the most extraordinary collection of people, the best brains and certainly one of the largest gatherings, if not the largest gathering, of terrorism and security experts that has ever been brought together. All of them are here today and all of them have worked hard on the Internet blogs on which hundreds of papers were written and thousands of messages were exchanged, and of course yesterday, throughout the day in face-to-face meetings that I was told were serious and productive.

What you will hear now from our subject area coordinators as we call them, is possibly therefore the most informed judgement that we have ever had on the issue of terrorism and democracy.

The conclusions of the working groups will be made available to the wider audience this afternoon and I encourage you to pick them up at the documentation centre over there. They stand on their own. But it is now up to the Club of Madrid to translate this huge input into a dynamic, positive and comprehensive plan of action and to distil the recommendations from the experts into a short document that will contain a list of principles and policy recommendations.

The foundation has been laid and there is no doubt that the most profound declaration on the issue of terrorism that has ever been written will emerge from this conference. In other words, great effort has been invested and until Friday it is up to the Club of Madrid to make great efforts to produce a readable document. Thank you very much.

Kim Campbell
I would like to call upon our first working group coordinator, Louise Richardson, to report on the working groups who looked at causes and underlying factors leading to terrorism.

Louise Richardson
Good morning Mr President, Madam Prime Minister, ladies and gentlemen.

I have the Herculean task of summarizing, in five minutes, the work of 65 academics conducted over five months. To do justice to the complexity and the nuance of these discussions is a task that is quite beyond me. So I am simply going to trust in the goodwill of my colleagues, that they will forgive me for the necessary shortcuts as I provide a very cursory overview of the deliberations of this group.

Our group focused on the root causes of terrorism. We all share the belief that without an understanding of the underlying factors that lead to terrorism we cannot develop an effective counter-terrorism strategy. We looked at five levels of explanation or causes: individual, political, economic, cultural and religious. We all agreed that there is no one cause at any of these levels but that there are risk factors of terrorism at each of these levels of analysis, and that these risk factors interact with one another.

Our approach, as befits academics was to move away from oversimplification. We believe terrorism is a complex multi-faceted phenomenon and each terrorist movement must be understood in its own specific context: its specific socio-economic, political, historical, cultural, and religious context, if it is to be countered effectively. We believe that there is no one terrorism but many. There is no one terrorist psychology, but many. Terrorism is in fact a tactic employed by many different types of groups in many parts of the world in pursuit of many different objectives.

For this reason we believe that the goal of eliminating terrorism is unrealistic. The threat of terrorism cannot be eliminated but it certainly can be contained. We believe that there are crucial distinctions that need to be drawn. We need to distinguish between mass-based movements and groups that are isolated from their communities. We need to draw distinction between the leaders of these movements and their followers. We believe for example that poverty is not a cause of terrorism but that rapid modernization and structural inequalities, both national and international, and the culture of resentment and alienation they often breed, are risk factors for terrorism. We believe that no one religious tradition is particularly prone to terrorism, all religious traditions are open to violence. We also believe that religion is seldom the only cause of terrorism. But we also believe that religious justifications can make terrorist groups more absolutist and less restrained.

We believe that terrorism occurs under different political structures. From mature democracies to democratising regimes. However we also believe that democracies provide many opportunities to our leaders to prevent, indeed to pre-empt, an outburst of terrorist violence.

In our deliberations over the past seven months, the 60-plus academics in our five groups have been working on developing a shared analysis. Since arriving here yesterday we have focused exclusively on trying to extract, from this analysis, some specific policy recommendations.

Time precludes my spelling out all of these recommendations in detail, though I hope you will have the opportunity to read them later. Our overall message is one of hope. There are a great many things that democracies can do to counter terrorism. Just a few examples.

We can intervene in the schools, churches and prisons where individuals are radicalised. We can impede entrance into and facilitate exit from radical groups. We can sow decent among the radicals. We can mobilise the moderates. We can integrate the marginalized. We can educate our public in the traditions of the many cultures in their midst. We can develop societal resilience to terrorist threats. We can mitigate the impact and violence of rapid socio economic changes. We can do much much more.

In thinking about these and many other policy recommendations by our groups, I think we would agree that we didn’t explicitly say so, that 3 principles should guide all our counter terrorism policies.

First, terrorism is a complex phenomenon and requires a multifaceted response. Second, in responding to terrorism, democracies must never abandon the democratic principles they are designed to uphold. And third and finally, governments must ensure that their short counter terrorist actions do not undermine their long term goal of undermining the terrorism threat. Mr President, I’m honoured to present to you the conclusion of the five working groups deliberating on the root causes of terrorism.

Kim Campbell
Thank you very much and I’m sorry I forgot to mention that Louise Richardson is professor and executive dean of the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University.

Our next presenter served form 1985 to 2000 as the Secretary General of Interpol, which no doubt qualifies him highly to head the working groups with the subject areas of confronting terrorism. Ray Kendall now also serves on the board of the EU’s anti-fraud office.

Ray Kendall

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much, chairman and madam secretary general, for allowing us to present to you in a very brief manner, as Louise said, the findings of our different working groups.

I had the not just Herculean, but perhaps gargantuan task of dealing with the issues of confronting terrorism through the work of five different groups. Groups on policing, intelligence, military responses, terrorism financing and legal responses. Clearly these are key base issues in relating to any kind of strategy that we have to adopt to deal, at the front end shall we say, with terrorism.

Although the groups worked independently it was very clear that there was some overlap, and even in relation to what Louise said before, there was a general view accepted that the prevention and suppression of terrorism required a multi-lateral and multi-faceted approach. There was also a general view that whatever action that was to be taken there should be full application of democratic principles and absolute respect for the rule of law.

Working groups are presented in a numerical order in the programme. I will present them in a slightly different way, because one thing leads to another and what we discovered was that we all agreed that there has to be conditions created, in which the practitioners, of which I was one of the representatives and there were others in our specialist groups, conditions in which it is possible to work according to these democratic principles and the rule of law and therefore the work of the legal response group probably ought to be dealt with first.

Here it is important that I underline, and I’m trying to do justice and will no doubt not achieve that possibility, to all the members and coordinators of the different groups. I immediately apologise to them in advance for not perhaps reflecting the extent of the work that was done but which you will discover as Louise said if you go to the documents.

The legal response group established a certain number of important principles. Basically there was general agreement on the fact that probably the United Nations organisation was probably the body through which this legal response activity could best be taken from a global point of view. Although nowadays there are different regional areas with different initiatives in Europe.

Terrorism is a serious crime and one that is of much concern to the international community as a whole. No cause is so just that it can justify targeting innocent civilians and non combatants through deadly acts of violence. Such acts constitute terrorism and intellectual honesty requires that they are recognised as such. Indeed that important principle meant that we did not, as a group, spend too much time on dealing with the thorny issue of the definition of terrorism. There was sufficient declaration and principle to cover that issue.

The question of the duties and obligations of states was also very important. It is the duty of every state to prevent and suppress terrorism and its duty is owed to the international community as a whole. Very nice to say, but how can you do it? I think this is where people like myself who have practised for many years at the ground level, believe that the political level community has a very large responsibility in this area. If people do not conform to their international obligations then ways have to be found of bringing that about.

There were a number of policy recommendations as to what can be done at national level, and also what should be done from the international point of view. They even, in the legal group, went into the area of financing and money laundering and made some recommendations on that. Those will appear in the work of another group. There was strong insistence on the idea that in preventing and suppressing terrorism, states should scrupulously observe and guarantee human rights and humanitarian law standards and respect for the rule of law. In particular, states should comply with the international standards of treatment of individuals suspected of, or charged with acts of terrorism, as well as procedural safeguards for suspects and defendants. These are really very important key issues as you will imagine and there was a lot of insistence on that within this group.

There was also strong feeling that basically the kinds of legal provisions that were necessary probably essentially exist. The real issue as I said before, is compliance, how do we get people to work together on these things and how can we best help those who have difficulty in conforming with the different standards to bring that about. There we felt, there was responsibility on the part of those countries that are better equipped to give assistance in all areas to those countries who are less able for all sorts of reasons, to fulfil their international obligations to do so.

Under chapter 7 of the charter of the United Nations the Security Council should pay due regard to obligations that states have assumed under international law, by virtue of human rights treaties and customary international law. If decisions by the Council may effect peoples civil rights and obligations there is a right to judicial review in the determination of such rights and obligations.

And finally and quickly running over those different ideas. It is contrary to the basic principles of democracy and international law for any persons not to fall under the protection of the law. This would apply for instance to practices such as indefinite detention without access to judicial review, extra judicial execution and inhuman and degrading treatment in the course of interrogation, conducted either domestically or in third countries after extra legal rendition. A forceful response to terrorism is not undermined by the rule of law. On the contrary, the rule of law is an appropriate framework for the response. To apply the terminology “war on terrorism” entails the possibility that human rights standards that should be applied in these cases may be indefinitely suspended and this, throughout the recommendations of the legal group appears and you can see that there is much material for reflection and of decision for recommendation.

The second group that I had to deal with was one on intelligence. Intelligence community is very experienced with dealing with all kinds of international subversive phenomena. And therefore it is not surprising that most people in the group agreed on the kinds of recommendations they would want to make. Essentially their findings were that perhaps the new kind of situation we see in relation to terrorism requires different responses and it requires of course and we saw much criticism of the intelligence services in relation to certain recent acts, and of course there is a kind of assumer to be expressed here, that the security services essentially produce documentation that should remain secret. But at the same time we want to recommend that they share as far as possible, the information that they can. And conditions can be created under which that can happen and the group address different issues. Again you can find them in the different documents.

Part of the intelligence necessary, and the work necessary also concerns terrorist financing and there was a separate group that dealt with that. Their general conclusion was that the present situation was that the work that has been done has not been that successful. One of the reasons for that is that terrorism financing may have been confused with financial criminality and the two things are separate and different, and therefore the proposal from that group was that some kind of independent terrorism finance centre should be created and mandated under chapter 13 of the UN charter. They explain what that finance centre should do. They also insisted on the fact that the public and private sector aspect of cooperation was extremely important. Most of the information relating to this kind of activity remained in the private sector and therefore needed to be brought into the public sector.

Also there was an necessity to ensure that best use was made of the current existence of financial intelligence units under the Edwon Group and so there were considerable responsibilities and possibilities for improvement.

Policing, classical discussion that we had, about the role of policing in preventing terrorism, establishing situations where there was appropriate preparedness, investigating terrorism crimes and responding to crises during and after terrorism incidents. The recognition here was, and I think this is a theme yet again that came through many of our groups unless there is the political will to do something and the resources and finance available to do it, it won’t happen.

And so there is a heavy balance of responsibility here between those who make the political decisions and those who are the practitioners, such as the people in the police group.

Very important insistence on the fact that community policing, while most of the information that is needed in relation to terrorism, can be made available and is available at street level. And if there is no communication between the street level and the decision making law enforcement agencies, things become difficult.

There was also the issue of cooperation with so called non-democratic countries. How do we do that? Should we do it? And the answer of course is that many of the difficulties that we have, have their origin in those countries, and therefore its clear that if only for common sense reasons there should be some kind of cooperation but under fixed conditions covering the obligations to cooperate, the sophistication of threats, probability threats, and gravity of possible damage. And for sharing of intelligence, the issues of legality, integrity, protection, confidentiality, and data protection must be taken into account.

And the final group, we might call it the last resort group, was one dealing with the military response to terrorism. It was generally felt by the military representatives themselves that the military should only be used in last resorts and their work should be complementary to that of the civil institutions and civil police and yet again that the rule of law should apply to their activities. But that their special expertise could be extremely useful in crisis situations, in hostage situations and therefore there was value and indeed need on some occasions, for good cooperation between civil police and military services.

That as I said does not do justice to the tremendous amount of work that was done in these groups. But I know that from the recommendations that have been made that the document that I shall now present to President Cardoso will serve the drafting group very well in coming up with the final agenda. Thank you very much.

Kim Campbell
Thank you very much, Ray.

Phil Bobbit holds the Chair in Law at the University of Texas and he was the coordinator of the democratic response subject area and I invite Doctor Phil Bobbit to present to you.

Doctor Phil Bobbit
The umbrella of democratic responses to terrorism included groups on human rights, good governance, and international institutions.

As recently as the late 70s I would imagine, this grouping would have seemed a pretty odd assortment, and placing such a group in a conference on terrorism would have seemed pretty quixotic. But I think today we see that human rights are intimately connected to international security. Good governance is necessary to protect human rights and that democracies are assisted by effective multi-lateral institutions.

Democracy, if we take that term in its largest sense, not just to include represented institutions but also respect for pluralism, human rights and the rule of law, is the indispensable element in the war against terror because it immunises populations by giving them a stake in governing and redress for grievances, because it mobilises all sectors of society to repel terrorists from their midst, because it gives more than one society across the globe something in common other than just a threat, but most of all because its what we are fighting for, and without a clear objective, no war, no struggle, can be really won.

I had the unusual privilege of being able to visit each of these three groups and not surprisingly given the historic linkage I have just described, they had a lot in common and they agreed on many things. Of course there were differences in style. When I went to the international institutions group there were small clumps huddled around laptops actually drafting language. I went to the global governance group and they were disagreeing, even the rapporteur was disagreeing. When I went to the human rights group they were all inspiring but they were a little saintly for someone like me.

However all groups did agree on 5 propositions. That we needed a precise definition of terrorism, that incorporation of anti terrorism measures and international and national law was crucial, that the promotion and protection of democracy as I have broadly described it was indispensable, that greater transparency in government operations which counter terrorism tends to reduce was needed and above all that the human rights of all persons were at stake and they had to be zealously guarded. Let me take up each of these agreed measures first. And then I will talk about the areas that were unique to each group.

Accepting, in principle, the definition offered by the Secretary General’s high level panel, the human rights group preferred to state a simple general understanding: that terrorism is the pursuit of political ends by, and I quote “violence against civilians or non combatants where the purpose is sowing fear in that population and is never justified or legitimate regardless of its cause or the cause that inspires it”.

It was broadly felt that having a definition was critical so that arbitrary government acts couldn’t hide behind the claim of combating terrorism and that terrorists themselves couldn’t evade the frank term for what they were actually doing.

Second, the human rights group noted that a climate of impunity had in fact emboldened perpetrators and those involved in acts of terror, that it had eroded due process and the rule of law, that it had deprived victims of the right to seek justice.

There should be no impunity for acts of terrorism or the abuse of human rights in counter-terrorism measures. This echoed the Secretary General’s remark and I quote “that the UN must show zero tolerance of terrorism for any kind, for any reason” and therefore underlay the international institutions group’s call for a comprehensive convention on the international terrorism. This would not only define terrorism, and depend upon such a definition, it would declare it a crime against humanity. It would require the state parties to adopt legislation, punishing a conspiracy to commit terrorism acts, prosecute or extradite those charged with these acts, to share information with other states seeking to punish these acts.

Third, all three groups agreed on the need for the promotion of democracy whereas you would expect the global governance group could not agree on whether democracy was all that effective as an anti terrorism tool and supported democracy for its own sake. The international institutions group recommended that the UN become more proactive in supporting democratic governance. It called attention to the community of democracies and its UN incarnation, the democracy caucus. Democracies have an obligation to help other democracies when they are under assault from terrorism, it was felt.

Yet as the human rights group noted, civil society and democratic forces worldwide are caught between threats from terrorist groups on the one hand, and excessive and arbitrary restrictions imposed by states in the name of counter-terrorism on the other. And this imperils their ability to advance the democratic process.

The good governance group stressed the need to protect the quality of democracy, to deepen it, in all states. They stressed the crucial criteria of inclusion. There was less agreement in this group, as you might expect, on whether conditionality should be used instead as an incentive for democratic practices. They emphasized that counter-terrorism aid however ought to be made compatible with democratic and civilian control over the armed forces.

Most importantly there was complete agreement across all three groups that the protection of human rights was essential to democracy.

Now in addition to these views that span the groups, there was particular recommendations according to the subject matter of each. These will be available online, and I will just very briefly mention them

The international institutions group drew attention to the UN’s counter-terrorism commitment. They wanted its resources, both financial and legislative to be expanded. They urged the Secretary Council to initiate onsite investigations of charges that a state is harbouring or supporting terrorism and they proposed sanctions including and I quote “the full range of chapter 7 measures where a state is actively complicit in sheltering or in assisting terrorist networks”. That group called for greater integration between the various international organisations addressing this problem, and they made what I thought were some very important proposals about strengthening an anti-proliferation regimes especially the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

They also wanted to ratify the bio weapons treaty, to make the IAEA’s model additional protocol a global norm, and they stress that the IAEA needed more inspectors and better financed ones to make the kind of unassailable case that could serve to support UN action.

The global governance group focused on its subject by stressing the need for the local ownership of democratic institutions. There was some concern about societies being lectured as to what institutions are right for them. It was felt in this group, that a smaller footprint, as they put it, was necessary for intervention that sought to establish democracy. But it was conceded that a larger footprint, by which I took them to mean armed forces, could sometimes be necessary to sweep away a dictatorship even if these forces could not be sufficient to establish democracy.

The human rights group deplored racial profiling, religious discrimination and they urged the proscription of hate crimes.

To these I think notable and important sentiments I will add three points of descent.

The international institutions group refused to say how the use of force should proceed when the security council was deadlocked and the threat of terrorist acts were real but not really imminent. Good governance could not agree that democracy was itself a target of terrorism in the 21st century and this position seems to me unassailable in light of the infamous Qahar tapes before the Iraqi election. The human rights group rejected the suggestion that the Secretary Council empower the international criminal court to hear terrorist cases as a way of bringing the US on board.

All in all I think this was a rather impressive collection of people, they worked very hard. I was greatly honoured to visit with them. My thanks especially go to Ghia Nodia, Asma Jahangir and Phil Hamsen, who were the three chiefs of these groups.

In 1435 a plague struck this city. There are still walls standing where the people of Madrid tried to protect themselves from that epidemic. In some ways the 21st century network of global terrorism is similar to that kind of epidemic. For one thing I think we understand it about as well as they understood the plague. The best advice of these groups is that we strengthen our immune systems. That means strengthening human rights and democracy. Thank you.

Kim Campbell

Thank you so much. The civil society working groups were co-chaired by two eminent scholars – Mary Kaldor Professor of Global Governments at the London School of Economics, and Miguel Darcy who is the head of Civicus and Comunitas in Brasil and Mary and Miguel will jointly report on the work of their groups.

Miguel Darcy
As civil society is a complex and diverse world I think that it was fitting that its report would be presented by two people – a man and a woman; one from the North and one from the South. But hopefully it will be brief.

We will share with you four principles and one strategic proposal. And before that, just let me say that our working group included activists from different places around the world. These were people - these are people, men and women - who are the front lines of the struggle for democracy. And this gave a sense of practicality and even urgency to our recommendations and proposals for the club of Madrid.

The outcome of our deliberations were, as I said, four key principles and one strategic proposal for action.

Here are the key principles; and the proposal will be presented by Mary Kaldor.

The first is the need to acknowledge that terrorism is a global phenomenon. It’s not just 9/11 in New York or 11/March in Madrid. It is also Bali, Riad, Casablanca, Iraq, Palestine, Zimbabwe, Dalfur, Belfast and so many other places of the world.

This is not as trivial as it seems. In many places of the world today, the debate about terrorism is seen as being primarily inspired by a vision from the West; as if only the West was at risk, at threat, and this should be acknowledged and this should be overcome.

The Madrid agenda, in our view, must make clear that we are concerned about terrorism wherever it takes place.

The second principle, coming from this first element is that the most violent places in today’s world are either authoritarian states, where violence is inflicted by state security forces; or failed states and conflict zones, where violence is inflicted both by state and non-state actors. Therefore, our commonsense is that terrorism is both state and non-state; that democracy and legitimate political authority is an alternative both to authoritarian states and to failing states and conflict zones.

Thirdly, that the priority focus of the struggle against terror should be exactly in those places of violence, where there is great human suffering and also because those are the places in which violence and injustice, old grievances, are invoked as a justification by terrorists. Our third principle is that democracy cannot be imposed from above or from the outside. It can only be built from within each society, but it is also true that this process of building democracy, strengthening democracy, can and should be supported by the international community.

Civil society and democracy represent alternatives to terrorism. They are ways of managing conflicts and dealing with grievances. Citizens are agents, not only spectators. They can shape their own destiny. They have responsibilities as well as rights. They can build inclusive communities where everyone feels they have a stake through civic participation, economic activity and education.

Fourth principle: the working groups have been inspired by the experience of Madrid. The which, the way in which the people of Spain and specially the people of this city responding to the bombing was exemplary. They showed that it is possible to counter the new type of terrorist networks, with new forms of social network and civic mobilisation. We urge the Madrid agenda to acknowledge and build on the basis of this legacy.

Now I will hand the floor to Mary Kaldor.

Mary Kaldor
As Miguel, ladies and gentlemen I’m very happy to be here, as Miguel just told you, in our working group we have a lot of grassroots activists and we heard a lot of day-to-day experiences of people in very difficult situations. We heard from a leading democracy activist in Zimbabwe. We heard from a South Korean who really believes that it is possible to open up totalitarian regimes like North Korea through creating links. We heard from the families of 9/11. We heard from civil society activists in Iraq, Palestine, Israel, Spain among others. Now, our recommendations are really built on those experiences. And our central recommendation is for the creation of a new, global, citizens’ network; and the goal of this network is the following:

First of all, support for civil society and the protection and empowerment of individual citizens in areas of violence. In particular, not just in areas of violence, to all citizens who are threatened by violence.

Secondly, the exchange of stories and experiences as we did in our working group. The working group, as I said, heard very different stories, and the different stories do give very different perspectives. How terrorism is seen in the United States or Spain is very different from how terrorism is seen in, for example, the Middle East.

Thirdly, and relatedly: hard, long discussions about specific situations, because every situation, as all the other subject area coordinators have emphasised, is different. And you need to have hard, long discussions with the people actually in those situations to work out appropriate strategies.

Fourthly: raising public awareness and knowledge about civil society groups. What they do; what they think in areas of political violence.

And finally as a mechanism, and that follows from everything I’ve said, of early warning and reaction.

Now the members of this network will be people, individuals, members of groups, who commit themselves to express solidarity towards each other, wherever they come from and who share common values based on the notion of human security: the security of the individual. And these values would include: the equality of human beings; that the lives of human beings are valued equally wherever they are and whoever they are; and the principles, which have been again emphasised by others, of justice, human rights and the rule of law.

We envisage the citizens’ network as consisting of overlapping networks: local; regional; global; which would make use of web-based communication and we were very conscious of the contribution that open democracy has made to this summit. And the kind of things they can do through web-based communication to help this process. And also of course, very importantly, access to the media.

Now we think it’s very important that this proposal is made here at the Club of Madrid. And we want that, we ask the members of the Club of Madrid to support and welcome this initiative. We really believe that through a link with the Club of Madrid this could facilitate our access to decision makers in governments and international institutions. It could facilitate publicity for these cases that we’re concerned about. And what we’d like to do as an example of what could be done: we’d like to draw the attention of the members of the Club of Madrid to three pressing cases, which came up in our working group, which really need action now. Which we would like action taken here at this conference.

And these are the three cases:

First of all, last week, a leading journalist in Azerbaidjan, the editor of an independent critical magazine - his name was Elmar Huseinov- was killed. Civil society groups led, in fact, by one of our working group coordinators, Arzu Abdullayeva, have set up a committee to investigate this killing. And all of those people are in a very risky situation. We would ask members of the Club of Madrid to fully support and help this investigation.

The second case: yesterday, one of our Iraqi members of our civil society group, received an e-mail from an Iraqi citizen Al Jabbar Shakir Al Gabar. His car was shot at by American forces in Baghdad. He was injured and his wife was killed. The case has been closed - this happened on February the twentieth - because the investigating judge was unable to prosecute the soldiers. Now you've seen over the last week a lot of publicity about the Italian secret service agent who was killed in a similar way. What we want to point out is the life of an ordinary Iraqi citizen, the life of the wife of Mr. Al Gaban is equal to the life of an Italian and the life of a security agent. So we would ask the Club of Madrid to call for a full investigation into the death of Mrs Al Gaban.

And the third pressing case that we want to bring up is that of the human rights activist from Tunisia - Radia Nasrawi – who was brutally beaten by police officers on her way to a demonstration in Tunis after criticizing the arrest of lawyer Muhammad Abu the week before.

Her daughter was also beaten and had several stitches on her head. Again, we ask the Club of Madrid to demand a full investigation and legal proceedings against those responsible before the world summit on information society is held in November in Tunisia.

Now I bring up these three cases because they are all cases of violence against civilians. They are cases that are urgent and happening now. And it demonstrates to all of us how the Club of Madrid could, how a civil society network which can raise these issues, could work together with the Club of Madrid.

Thank you very much.

Kim Campbell
Thank you, and our last presentation will be made by my countryman Fen Hampson who is the dean of the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carlton University in Ottawa. And he had a very interesting task which was to lead a virtual subject group on international cooperation. Fen Hampson.

Fen Hampson
It was indeed an interesting task, because uh, I had no working groups to manage or coordinate as part of this exercise. My role was to monitor the discussions in all of the sixteen blogs and to try to make some sense of them in terms of what they had to say about some of the challenges about international cooperation against terrorism.

Terrorism compels cooperative international action, not only because of its global reach, but because of its local origins. No society can be wholly safe from terrorism while any society serves as a local recruiting ground, training camp or safe haven for terrorists. And this may sound obvious, but it's an important point. The security of every country is interdependent with the security of every other. And these facts define three priorities for international cooperation against terrorism.

The first is to build capacity for countering terrorism in all countries. The second, and equal priority, is to mobilise civil society, we just heard about that, against the local origins of terrorism and also against the global threat that terrorists represent. And the third, and it is also an equal priority, is that a key part of the process of achieving the unconditional deligitimation of terrorist methods, is that the struggle against terrorism must be carried out in full compliance with the international human rights covenants and with international humanitarian law.

Together, these three priorities are best satisfied, as you’ve heard from the previous panellists, by democratisation at every level of governments.

Terrorist acts are prescribed in twelve international treatise, at least seven regional conventions and successive resolutions of the Un security council. And as we’ve heard still the absence of an agreed, authoritative definition of terrorism remains a political impediment to fuller international cooperation. And a much needed international convention on terrorism, most of which is written, that would fill normative gaps at the national and international levels.

There is a strong case, accordingly, for saying that the key rules should be gathered together under a new umbrella convention which clearly and unequivocally articulates the basic norms that should drive all law and policy.

The critical issue is a clear-cut and universally endorsed definition of terrorism that would trigger remedial measures by states and international organisations. And I think it’s fair to say that the secretary general’s high level panel has produced a consensus draft, the bottom line of which is that acts that specifically target civilians or non-combatants, whatever the context and whatever the motive, must be absolutely outlawed.

I would like to, very quickly, identify five areas that pose specific challenges for international cooperation.

The first is domestic governance. The second is mitigating the adverse effects of globalisation. The third is trans-governmental cooperation. The fourth: regional organisations, and the fifth: global institutions.

In the case of domestic governance, international cooperation is best directed to two sets of responses: the first - strengthening the capacity of every government to prevent and suppress terrorist acts; and strengthening civil societies freedom to thrive in safety and peace; secondly - fortifying capacity for effective governance and fostering civic participation. These interact in virtuous circles of democratic and sustainable development.

International law requires every state to establish terrorist acts as serious criminal offences in domestic laws, but it’s quite obvious that not all states have the capacity to meet those obligations. Cooperative counter terrorism ---a cooperative counter terrorism policy – should aim at building that capacity, with respect especially to legal and administrative means; to catch and prosecute suspected terrorists; identifying and freezing terrorists financial assets; effective immigration and border controls to prevent terrorist movements; and interdiction of terrorist arms and materials.

No less important than law enforcement capacity, are measures to encourage civil society energies, to protect human rights and to promote democratisation in every society. Democratic governance is not a counter-terrorism panacea. We heard that in many of the panel presentations. For the most part however, democracies do show decisive advantages for fighting terrorism. They provide procedures for peacefully and fairly resolving social division. They impart legitimacy to governments in hard times. They facilitate fairly-shared economic growth; and lively civil debate in an open democracy also challenges and undercuts the appeal of militant ideologies.

It is also important to point out that the international human rights regime and its protagonists have had a substantial impact in reducing discrimination against communal and religious minorities, thus undercutting one of the key rationales for terrorism.

This is also an important and vital international capacity and enhancing instrument for tackling terrorism.

Let me turn to the second challenge: globalisation.

Globalisation pressures in the form of international trade, investment, trans-national corporations may also create and exacerbate the conditions that justify international terrorism by increasing inequalities, dependencies, alien foreign presences and so forth. The agents of globalisation, as we all know, are also, increasingly, targets of international terrorism. It is therefore vital that the international community promote policies, domestically and internationally, that help minimise the malign effects of globalisation and the marginalisation of poor countries. And this involves strategies that mitigate the impact of socio-economic change by promoting literacy, education, political and economic participation and so forth.

The so-called weak-globalisers have to be brought into the world economy. And it also means that the private sector has to be enlisted in helping to design investment and employment strategies that help to incorporate disadvantaged and marginalised groups.

In the case of promoting greater levels of trans-governmental cooperation, governments are required by international law to cooperate in the suppression of terrorists. The policy implications are plain: cooperative counter-terrorism requires governments to strengthen collaboration in multiple strategies of prevention and suppression. Development aid can be focused on advancing good governments, human rights protection, quickened economic growth and poverty reduction. In many countries however, security sector reforms constitute an unparalleled policy imperative. Ill-disciplined, untrained or corrupt police, soldiers and judicial officers threaten human rights and human security. And we heard about that by Mary Kaldor.

They undermine governmental capacity and authority and they set the conditions for terrorists to flourish. Capacity-rich governments can accelerate counter-terrorism by helping capacity-poor governments create accountable, skilled and effective security forces, correctional services and judiciaries.

Very quickly turning to the last two elements: regional cooperation and global institutions.

In Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and the Arab countries, regional organisations can bring a unique knowledge and adaptability to counter-terrorism efforts, and to altering social, politic and economic circumstances in which terrorists thrive. Nowhere is this potential for regional organisation more significant or urgent than in promoting democratic development. This means more, however, than election sponsoring, sponsorship and monitoring, critical though these activities are. It also means promoting deep democracy: the norms, routines, beliefs and institutions that generate tolerance, popular participation, openness, accountability.

In the case of regional, global institutions, Philip Bobbit covered much of the terrain that I would have covered, but I do want to stress that in particular international institutions and the UN in particular, have a critical role to play in promoting, establishing and strengthening existing normative frameworks. And in particular, international norms will be improved by the early conclusion of two important new treaties: as I mentioned earlier – the draft comprehensive convention on international terrorism and the draft international convention for the suppression of acts of nuclear terrorism.

Let me conclude by saying that difference societies, as we’ve heard earlier, experience terrorism differently and its origins are diverse; but every country is exposed to terrorisms fearful costs and shares an urgent global interest in preventing and suppressing the crimes that terrorists commit. This is the manifest argument for cooperative counter-terrorism in all of the five dimensions that I talked about. It is both an inescapable legal obligation and a practical necessity. Thank you.

Kim Campbell

Thank you very much. And I just want to reiterate that these reports will be on the conference website if you would like to look in greater detail at the discussions that led to these particular stage of development it is now of course for the Club of Madrid members to digest these reports as well as what will come in from the reporters of all the panels. And to try and find the consistencies that will go into the Madrid agenda. But I think what was interesting was how much consensus was achieved on some key issues, by this diverse working group. I’d now like to invite our president Fernando Enrique Cardoso, President of the Club of Madrid to close the meeting. Thank you.

Fernando Henrique Cardoso
Let me say how we are deeply grateful for the work that has been done by you, specially this morning by the reporters. It’s quite clear that you have present to us a very comprehensive view not just on terrorism, but also on what has to be done to combat terrorism.

And to my surprise there is much more coincidence amongst you than I could imagine at the beginning. I know that you have very lively debates in each one of your working groups. I was present today in one discussion, very important discussion, on the Arab and Palestine, sorry, Palestine and Israel debates. And I saw differences. This is wonderful; this is good This is why the Club of Madrid took the decision to ask you to come here. We decide to ask you to come here not to be in agreement, but to show different points of view, and to show that practically it’s possible democratically to reach some convergences.

From what I heard, I believe that you have been successful in converging in some key questions. First of all, all of those who just finished make these speech here insist on the fact that terrorism is against humanity. We cannot accept terrorism. There is no arguments in favour of terrorism. And because of human rights, because the first right is the right to be alive and terrorism is against human rights by definition. So we are against terrorism. This is an absolute principle that you have all synthesised. That you cannot use this similar instruments to those used by terrorists to combat terrorism. Terrorism has to be always taken into account and we have to eliminate terrorism under the rule of law. Democracy is an important instrument to cope modern terrorism.

One of the reporters show us the enormous variety in terms, in kinds of terrorism. In terms not just of forms of terrorism, but causes of terrorism. So it’s not more possible to imagine that only one solution, only one instrument will solve the problem of terrorism. That this will say: counter terrorism through violence.

We know it’s necessary to use repressive instruments to curb terrorism we know that it is necessary, from time to time, to use armies. Armies are very important in at some point to allow people to have more security. We know that absolutely indispensable to have good intelligence services, to have interaction between different intelligence service. Within each nation and among nations, all this is necessary provide we are following the rules of law. This has been emphasising again and again and again. So the idea is not to be paralysed against the enemy, the enemy’s terrorism. But the idea is not to be, to some extent, absorbed by terrorism spirit by using terrorist means to combat terrorism.

It was very obviously, but clearly present to us this morning. So I think that now, it’s our responsibility, I mean, those who are Club of Madrid members, those who have been in the past responsible in different countries in the world and now they are former presidents, former prime-ministers, to take very seriously what has been present to us and to continue to act.

This is just a beginning; the idea is not just to have a kind of appraisal on what is terrorism, on what can be done against terrorism. It’s much more than that. I hope we will be starting a process. This process practically means that to have to establish a kind of alliance through networks through a continuous of different, you know, gatherings, connecting each one of this gatherings with, and trying to provide to them information and more than information, the spirit that we know that is absolutely necessary to combat terrorism using democratic instruments.

Of course, and this has been said here, in some cases non-democratic governments are dealing with terrorists and since terrorism is against mankind, we have no reason to say well this is not normal possible to cooperate with this government because they are not democratic. No, in that case, human rights is the first value. So we have to take this into account.

By taking also some measure to protect ourselves from information coming from other governmental, non-democratic governments, but not, is not a reason not to take into account, you know, the whole system of power fighting terrorism. This has been said here this morning. All this is difficult to put together. All this requires some new answer, but the point is that you are starting a process.

I hope at the end of this conferenc

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