Terrorism is to be considered as an assault on universal human values and it represents activities undertaken against humanity. Terrorist acts pose a violent threat to the civilized communities of all states. Therefore, it is critically important that terrorism must be addressed employing the full range of available legal mechanisms to the extent they are applicable for the purpose. It is usual to devise strategies to counter terrorism by drawing principles and norms from the different branches of international law, as they become applicable to the prevention and punishment of terrorists and their acts. These branches of international law include international human rights law, international humanitarian law, international criminal law on peace and security and divisions of general international law like the law on state responsibility. Based on this concept, the UK has domestically introduced significant anti-terrorism legislation. The prevention of terrorism has been given a higher priority and the new legislation has drawn on new instruments equivalent to the European levels. This paper examines the extent to which the formulation of anti-terrorism strategies conforms with the human rights standards. The comparison will be done with the human rights standards, as they exist in the laws of the United Kingdom and the international human rights instruments which apply to the United Kingdom. Certain human rights under both domestic as well as international laws may get restricted to some extent, to prevent terrorism and make the persons involved in t
he terrorist actions subject to prosecution under applicable anti-terrorism legislation. Even though this fact has been recognized by both the domestic and international human rights laws, they prescribe that some of the fundamental rights should not be restricted and the restrictions in respect of certain others should be proportionate to the threat of terrorism involved. This implies that it is the responsibility of the states to minimize the restrictions of rights involved in the anti-terrorist law. It is also mandated on the states that they should demonstrate that they have taken the measures only to the extent necessary to prevent the incidence of terrorist acts and to punish the terrorists. This paper argues that the government of the United Kingdom and Parliament has not taken the burden of showing that there are no other ways to deal with terrorism, which would involve less serious restrictions on the rights. This paper further argues that several of the legal measures undertaken by the UK government have been adopted for exceptionally unnecessary reasons. The measures involve significant restrictions on the rights of foreigners residing in the country without any valid reason for imposing such restrictions, in the direction of reducing the terrorist threat. There have been criticisms raised by the courts in the United Kingdom, about the need for adopting such strategies and the courts are skeptical about the ability of the government to sustain the current anti-terrorism strategies given their non-conformity with human rights in some cases.