![]() Secondly, although states may define terrorism for themselves, it is difficult for them to know whether there is any minimum or core “soft” concept of terrorism that they are nonetheless expected to enact. These include the duty on states to themselves refrain from supporting terrorism and to counter terrorist financing, prevent terrorism and support for it, prevent the movement of terrorists, address abuse of refugee status, and prevent and suppress the travel of “foreign terrorist fighters.” The same may be said of the “soft” counterterrorism agenda expressed through the UN General Assembly’s Global Counter-terrorism Strategy and the technical work of bodies such as the UN Office of Counter-Terrorism, UN Counter-Terrorism Centre, UN Office of Drugs and Crime, and through the 42 entities under the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Coordination Compact. The legal differences are also fertile ground for political tensions where one state comes under pressure from another, or its allies, to assist the latter to enforce its terrorism laws.īeyond the criminal law sphere, divergent national definitions equally impair cooperation across the spectrum of other measures required by Council resolutions. Instead, different domestic counterterrorism laws sail by like ships passing in the night. In the absence of an agreed international definition, one state is not required to criminalize the same “terrorist” conduct as another state by asserting extraterritorial quasi-“universal” jurisdiction over it. The same state may also be unable to prosecute the foreign offender in its own legal system. Impunity may accordingly result where a state is unable to extradite a person who may have committed a terrorist offense abroad under another state’s law, but not under its own. The “dual criminality” requirement of many extradition and mutual assistance laws and treaties may preclude cooperation between two states if their definitions of terrorism do not cover common ground. The failure to define terrorism continues, however, to seriously impede the effectiveness of counterterrorism, its consistency with human rights law and international humanitarian law, and the legitimacy and legality of the Council’s exercise of its international security powers under the United Nations Charter.įirstly, from a practical standpoint, the inevitable divergence between national definitions impairs inter-state cooperation to “bring to justice” terrorists, as the Council requires. Much valuable and principled counterterrorism law and cooperation has occurred based on the Council’s suite of resolutions, despite the lack of a definition. While the Council intrusively demanded extensive domestic legislation, individual states were generally content to retain their sovereign discretion to identify and legislate for themselves the meaning of terrorism. Even if they had, their definition would have been unlikely to reflect or attract an international consensus, triggering serious compliance problems in national implementation.ĭespite “making” new law, as a political body the Council seemed satisfied with its political instinct, expressed by the then United Kingdom’s Ambassador, Jeremy Greenstock, that “What looks, smells and kills like terrorism is terrorism.” Legal definition was instead devolved to states in national implementation. The limited club of 15 Council members would have been unlikely to agree. ![]() Since new counterterrorism measures were perceived to be urgent after 9/11, there was no time to get bogged down in the intractable question of definition, which had eluded international agreement for a century. ![]() ![]() On the one hand, the Council’s approach was tactically brilliant. Security Council Resolution 1373 and successive resolutions have deliberately omitted any definition, despite requiring states to take far-reaching legislative and executive action. It is remarkable that two decades of extensive global counterterrorism law and cooperation have proceeded from a normative black hole: the absence of a common definition of terrorism. MINUSMA peacekeeper patrols airstrip in Kidal, Northern Mali. ![]()
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