Abstract
The third recital of the Preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights runs as follows: “whereas, it is essential if human beings are not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law”. This has been described as a “submerged” right, one that does not enjoy the full status accorded to those rights that feature in the Declaration proper. In this essay, I draw on this submerged right to argue three things. First, the oppressed may permissibly employ terroristic violence as a last resort to end their oppression. Second, despite such prima facie justifiability, the empirical conditions that need to be met to legitimately justify such violence are rarely met. Third, when terroristic violence – conceived as the ultimate “last resort” – fails to meet these justificatory standards, we are, in effect, asking the oppressed to endure profound and ongoing ethical violations without reasonable hope for an effective remedy. In other words, taking seriously the moral constraints that structure the right to rebellion implies that, in many real-world circumstances, oppressed people do not enjoy meaningful rights to resist their oppression.