The attack by Hamas against Israel and the recent clashes between Iran and Pakistan based on crossed accusations of supporting armed organizations against their interests on each side of the border highlight one of the most delicate issues that directly affects the struggle. against international terrorism: the lack of definition of this phenomenon at the multilateral level.
We find this situation in the most representative forum, which is the United Nations (UN).
We see the root of this problem perfectly reflected when countries such as Argentina, the United States, France, the United Kingdom, among many others, defined the actions of Hamas on October 7 as terrorist. The president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, assured that this group " It is not a terrorist organization” but a “group of liberation fighters.”
There is a great paradox and even a contradiction at the UN level: although there is no definition within the framework of the General Assembly, the same organization in different resolutions maintains that “terrorism in all its forms and manifestations constitutes one of the most serious threats to peace and security” and these two concerns were the origin of his own spirit.
An attempt to fill this conceptual gap is found in the 1999 International Convention against the Financing of Terrorism when it warns of terrorism “Any other act intended to cause death or serious bodily injury to a civilian or any other person not directly participating in the hostilities in a situation of armed conflict, when the purpose of said act, due to its nature or context, is to intimidate a population or force a government or an international organization to carry out an act or to refrain from doing so.
More modernly, Security Council resolution 1566 of 2004 “Recalls that criminal acts, including against civilians, committed with the intention of causing death or serious bodily injury or taking hostages with the purpose of provoking a state of terror in the population in general, in a group of people or in a certain person, intimidate a population or force a government or an international organization to carry out an act, or to refrain from carrying it out.”
The unfortunate thing about this norm is that it was not taken under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which would have made its compliance mandatory for all Member States.
Where are we in the fight against terrorism?
The international community understands this scourge as an internal crime with international implications.
This means that it is the national states that must delimit it in their legal structures and then articulate for themselves the attributes of power (judicial-political-police) that they possess in order to combat it.
Despite all these limitations, the UN has a Committee against terrorism that studies individual or legal persons or organizations on a case-by-case basis and if they are classified as such, they are consolidated in a list with sanctions that, on this occasion, are compliant. mandatory for its members.
Here we find Al Qaeda, the Islamic State and the Houthis, among the best known.