Law & Paneir

An Introduction It is impossible to have a conversation about politics or public policy these days without someone mentioning the magic words “civil society”, so one might think that people are clear what they mean when they use this term and why it is so important. Unfortunately, clarity and rigor are conspicuous by their absence in the civil society debate, a lack of precision that threatens to submerge this concept completely under a rising tide of criticism and confusion. The civil society puzzle According to whose version one prefers, “civil society” means “fundamentally reducing the role of politics in society by expanding free markets and individual liberty” (Cato), or it means the opposite - “the single most viable alternative to the authoritarian state and the tyrannical market” (WSF), or for those more comfortable in the middle ground of politics, it constitutes the missing link in the success of social democracy (central to Third Way thinking a

War on terror After the terrorist attacks in the US on 11 September 2001, the Bush Administration declared a ‘war on terror’ unlike any previous war. The suspected terrorists under attack were termed ‘illegal or unlawful enemy combatants’, a formulation designed by the US authorities to mean they were not covered by the 1949 Geneva Conventions applicable to prisoners of war. The war could be conducted anywhere, with the US claiming all the rights of a belligerent party under the laws of war, while denying those same rights to their adversaries. By placing captives of this ‘war on terror’ in locations outside the US , such as Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, the aim was to create legal black holes beyond the reach of US and international human rights law. This is not permissible under international law. 1 The US has since detained thousands as ‘enemy combatants’ without proper legal recourse and subject to abuse. Guantánamo Bay detention camp has housed 775 in inhumane conditions, of w