Why a Universally Accepted Definition Has Not Been Agreed

In one line

No universally accepted definition exists because States disagree about whether armed struggle against foreign occupation is excluded, about whether the acts of State armed forces are excluded, and because the term carries a moral condemnation, admits no agreed core element, and can be defined by act rather than by phenomenon.

The two obstacles that block the convention

These are the answer, and everything else is context.

One: national liberation movements

The claim is that a people struggling against colonial domination, alien occupation or racist regimes, in exercise of the right to self-determination, cannot commit terrorism when it uses force, because the struggle is lawful.

Its legal support is real and should be stated. Resolution 1514 (XV) of 1960, the Friendly Relations Declaration of 1970 and article 20(2) of the African Charter, which gives colonised or oppressed peoples the right to free themselves by any means recognized by the international community, all support the lawfulness of the struggle. [The African Charter: Peoples Rights].

The answer to it is equally strong. The lawfulness of a cause does not make every method lawful, and no cause justifies the deliberate killing of civilians, which is prohibited by humanitarian law regardless of who is right. Paragraph 3 of the Declaration of 1994 says exactly that, and paragraph 1 condemns terrorism wherever and by whomever committed.

The negotiating problem is that the developing States will not accept a text that could characterise a liberation struggle as terrorism, and the other States will not accept an exclusion that could shelter attacks on civilians. Both positions are defensible and neither has moved.

Two: State terrorism and the armed forces exclusion

The draft comprehensive convention contains an exclusion clause for the activities of armed forces during an armed conflict, as governed by international humanitarian law, and for the activities undertaken by the military forces of a State in the exercise of their official duties, as governed by other rules of international law.

The dispute is about the second limb. Some States argue that acts of a State's military forces outside an armed conflict must not be excluded, because that would place State violence beyond the convention while covering identical acts by non-State actors. Others argue that the conduct of armed forces is regulated by other bodies of law and that a terrorism convention should not intrude.

This is the "State terrorism" argument in its precise legal form, and it should be stated that way rather than as a slogan. [The Freedom Fighter Objection, and State Terrorism].

The three further obstacles

Three: the word is a condemnation, not a description.

To call an act terrorism is to say it is unjustifiable, which is why paragraph 3 of the Declaration adds that such acts are unjustifiable whatever the considerations of a political, philosophical, ideological, racial, ethnic, religious or any other nature that may be invoked to justify them.