Chapter 7 General Application of Human Rights Standards I n this chapter, the principles of interpretation for civil and political rights are explained. This is followed by a brief explanation of how economic and cultural rights should be understood and applied. While it is likely that civil and political rights will be of more direct relevance to combating terrorism, the indivisibility of civil and political rights and economic, social and cultural rights needs to be re-affirmed.136 The two groups of rights are directly linked, and, as will be shown below, in the counter-terrorism context, both need to be guaranteed if counter-terrorism strategies are to be carried out in a manner consistent with democratic principles. Civil and political rights As has been set out above, the most relevant international human rights treaties containing mainly civil and political rights are the ICCPR and the ECHR. The ICCPR is applicable across the OSCE region. The methods of applying civil and political rights are the same for both treaties. “Living instrument” Essential to the understanding of how civil and political human rights work is the principle that they ought to be given an evolutive or a dynamic interpretation if they are to remain relevant. The European Court of Human Rights has therefore repeatedly referred to the fact that the ECHR is a “living instrument.”137 How human rights are interpreted can therefore evolve over time. For example, although the ECHR contains no reference to a safe environment, the European Court has recognized that in order to protect private, family and home life an individual needs to have a safe environment, and therefore the Court has read such protections into the ECHR.138 As a consequence, the Court (but also the Human Rights Committee) does not see itself as expressly bound by any doctrine of precedent. What the European Court of Human Rights has done is, therefore, not to create new rights, but to develop the scope of existing rights. At the same time, human rights institutions are requiring an ever-higher standard of human rights interpretation and protection. 136 See, for example, op. cit., note 74, the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, as adopted by the World Conference on Human Rights on 25 June 1993. 137 ECtHR, Tyrer v. UK, Application no. 5856/72, 25 April 1978, para. 31 (“The Court must also recall that the Convention is a living instrument which, as the Commission rightly stressed, must be interpreted in the light of present-day conditions […]”). 138 ECtHR, Guerra and Others v. Italy, Case no. 116/1996/735/932, 19 February 1998, paras. 56-60. Countering Terrorism, Protecting Human Rights 65