From: Wade T.Smith (wade_smith@harvard.edu)
Date: Fri 15 Nov 2002 - 13:03:11 GMT
On Friday, November 15, 2002, at 07:57 , Lawrence DeBivort wrote:
> The US gov't definition of 'terrorism' excludes acts by States, which
> means,
> if one accepts the definition, that States can engage in terrorist
> activities (as many have, e.g. the death gangs in central and south
> America)
> without being called such.
There is no working definition of terrorism, at present, in the world.
This from http://www.undcp.org/odccp/terrorism_definitions.html is an
attempt.
- Wade
*****
Definitions of Terrorism
The question of a definition of terrorism has haunted the debate among
states for decades. A first attempt to arrive at an internationally
acceptable definition was made under the League of Nations, but the
convention drafted in 1937 never came into existence. The UN Member
States still have no agreed-upon definition. Terminology consensus
would, however, be necessary for a single comprehensive convention on
terrorism, which some countries favour in place of the present 12
piecemeal conventions and protocols.
The lack of agreement on a definition of terrorism has been a major
obstacle to meaningful international countermeasures. Cynics have often
commented that one state's "terrorist" is another state's "freedom
fighter".
If terrorism is defined strictly in terms of attacks on non-military
targets, a number of attacks on military installations and soldiers'
residences could not be included in the statistics.
In order to cut through the Gordian definitional knot, terrorism expert
A. Schmid suggested in 1992 in a report for the then UN Crime Branch
that it might be a good idea to take the existing consensus on what
constitutes a "war crime" as a point of departure. If the core of war
crimes - deliberate attacks on civilians, hostage taking and the killing
of prisoners - is extended to peacetime, we could simply define acts of
terrorism as "peacetime equivalents of war crimes".
Proposed Definitions of Terrorism
1. League of Nations Convention (1937):
"All criminal acts directed against a State and intended or calculated
to create a state of terror in the minds of particular persons or a
group of persons or the general public".
2. UN Resolution language (1999):
"1. Strongly condemns all acts, methods and practices of terrorism as
criminal and unjustifiable, wherever and by whomsoever committed;
2. Reiterates that criminal acts intended or calculated to provoke a
state of terror in the general public, a group of persons or particular
persons for political purposes are in any circumstance unjustifiable,
whatever the considerations of a political, philosophical, ideological,
racial, ethnic, religious or other nature that may be invoked to justify
them". (GA Res. 51/210 Measures to eliminate international terrorism)
3. Short legal definition proposed by A. P. Schmid to United Nations
Crime Branch (1992):
Act of Terrorism = Peacetime Equivalent of War Crime
4. Academic Consensus Definition:
"Terrorism is an anxiety-inspiring method of repeated violent action,
employed by (semi-) clandestine individual, group or state actors, for
idiosyncratic, criminal or political reasons, whereby - in contrast to
assassination - the direct targets of violence are not the main targets.
The immediate human victims of violence are generally chosen randomly
(targets of opportunity) or selectively (representative or symbolic
targets) from a target population, and serve as message generators.
Threat- and violence-based communication processes between terrorist
(organization), (imperilled) victims, and main targets are used to
manipulate the main target (audience(s)), turning it into a target of
terror, a target of demands, or a target of attention, depending on
whether intimidation, coercion, or propaganda is primarily sought"
(Schmid, 1988).
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