United Nations General Assembly Resolution 42·159 (Counterterrorism Measures)

United Nations General Assembly Resolution 42/159 (Counterterrorism Measures) is presented as both a forceful condemnation of international terrorism and a contested statement about the rights of peoples living under domination. Adopted in December 1987 by 153 votes to two, it called on nations to act vigorously against terrorism while preserving a right to struggle for self-determination and freedom. Noam Chomsky makes the resolution a focal example of how disagreements over counterterrorism can hinge on whose violence is named and whose political claims are recognized.

Adoption and provisions

The resolution came at a moment of heightened concern about international terrorism. The United Nations General Assembly condemned the phenomenon in severe terms and urged all nations to combat it vigorously. The vote was 153 in favor, with the United States and Israel opposed and Honduras abstaining.

The disputed passage stated that nothing in the resolution could prejudice the rights to self-determination, freedom, and independence set out in the United Nations Charter. It applied particularly to peoples subjected to colonial or racist regimes, foreign occupation, or other forms of colonial domination. It also affirmed their right to struggle to end that condition and to seek and accept support for that purpose, in accordance with the Charter and other principles of international law. The text thus placed its condemnation of terrorism alongside a qualification concerning resistance to coercive rule.

The dispute over who qualifies

Chomsky emphasizes that the United States and Israel rejected the passage affirming those rights; South Africa, then an ally of the United States, had also rejected them. He contrasts Washington’s classification of the African National Congress as a terrorist organization with its failure to place South Africa in the same category as Cuba and other states it described as terrorist. In his account, the practical effect was that Washington’s interpretation of terrorism prevailed, with serious human consequences.

The contrast makes the resolution more than a general denunciation of political violence. Its language sought to preserve a distinction between terrorism and the struggle of peoples deprived of rights through force. Chomsky argues that the refusal to accept that distinction exposes a conflict over the scope of the term itself: a definition may condemn violence in principle yet leave the violence of powerful states and their clients outside its reach.

Later significance

Chomsky connects the unresolved disagreement to later attempts to establish a comprehensive convention against terrorism. He argues that agreement remained difficult because the United States and its allies would not accept language resembling the contested passage, even if the definition of terrorism otherwise matched official American legal or military formulations. In his analysis, a global agreement could emerge only if the definition were reframed to exempt the terrorism of powerful states and their clients.

The resolution also serves as a historical counterpoint to the post-September 11 response. Chomsky describes governments using the attacks to intensify repressive policies, while the United States used the new phase of the War on Terror to consolidate military predominance and pursue global dominance. His reference to the 1987 vote places those developments within a longer dispute over whether counterterrorism rules apply consistently to states, their allies, and their opponents.

Legal and political frame

Elsewhere in the interview, Chomsky argues that the international rules governing force were designed to reject reprisals and constrain violence, not to authorize retaliation whenever a country is attacked. He invokes the postwar framework under the United Nations Charter, which permits force in self-defense against an armed attack, subject to the role of the Security Council in maintaining international peace and security. He further contends that the United States was not under an armed attack in the sense of Article 51, and that the same basic rules should apply to the United States as to states it opposes.

Against that background, Resolution 42/159 illustrates the political difficulty of making counterterrorism universal. It condemned terrorism, but its protection of self-determination and resistance to domination proved unacceptable to the United States and Israel. In Chomsky’s reading, the unresolved tension is not simply over how to oppose terrorism; it is over whether international law can restrain violence without selectively excluding the powerful and their clients from its standards.