许多问题根源于对“防止和打击暴力极端主义”这一短语中的几乎每一个词都没有明确的定义。使得政策措施和监管框架完全依赖一个本质上取决于背景的未定义概念，永远不能符合人权所依据的相称性和必要性原则。因此，最终会对合法行使基本自由的个人和团体歧视性地或过度广泛地适用这些措施。与恐怖主义一样，防止和打击暴力极端主义的过于宽泛定义和做法正在影响“普通”法律，造成新形式的法律例外论，包括撤销正当程序权、诉诸特殊法院，以及对安全罪行施加严厉处罚。与恐怖主义一样，打着打击极端主义幌子对人权捍卫者和公民社会活动人士的广泛镇压是可以预见的情况。具有明显讽刺意味的是，各国向安全理事会关于反恐的第1373(2001)号决议所设委员会或金融行动特别工作组等其他全球实体报告其关于“恐怖主义和极端主义”指控和处理情况的统计数据，宣传这些数字是它们致力于反恐的证据，并因其遵守起诉、管制和击败恐怖主义的全球义务而获得奖励，然而，人权与法治妥协的相互矛盾现实却是这一格局的重要组成部分。定义不清晰只是防止和打击暴力极端主义以复杂和多重方式挑战人权的原因之一。
report are rooted in the absence of a clear definition of almost every word in the phrase “preventing and countering violent extremism”. Making policy measures and regulatory frameworks entirely reliant on a non-defined concept that is by nature context-dependent can never be compatible with the principles of proportionality and necessity in which human rights are grounded. Doing so ultimately allows for a discriminatory or overbroad application of those measures to individuals and groups that legitimately exercise their fundamental freedoms. As with terrorism, overbroad preventing and countering violent extremism definitions and practices are infecting the “ordinary” law, creating new forms of legal exceptionalism, including the retraction of due process rights, the resort to exceptional courts and the imposition of severe penalties for security offences. As with terrorism, the wide-spread crackdown on human rights defenders and civil society activists under the guise of countering extremism is a predictable feature. In a notable irony, States report their statistics on “terrorism and extremism” charging and processing to the Security Council Committee established pursuant to resolution 1373 (2001) concerning counter-terrorism or other global entities, such as the Financial Action Task Force, promoting such numbers as evidence of their commitment to countering terrorism, and are rewarded for their “good practice” of adhering to global obligations to prosecute, regulate and defeat terrorism, despite the contradictory realities of the human rights and rule of law compromises that are part and parcel of that landscape. The lack of definitional clarity is only one of the reasons that preventing and countering violent extremism challenges human rights in complex and multiple ways.