Abstract
It is notoriously difficult to define terrorism. The 1973 Convention on terrorism described it as ‘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’ (Article 1.2). That definition is satisfactory so far as it goes, but it does not bring out the fact that most terrorist acts that come before the Security Council nowadays are not simply to create a state of terror but are intended to induce governments to act in ways that they had not otherwise intended — to release prisoners, for example.
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Notes
U Thant, View from the UN (London and Newton Abbot: David and Charles, 1978), pp. 302–8, 317–18; GAOR, 24th session, Supplement no. 2 (A/7602), paras 466–71.
US State Department, Selected Documents no. 19, 12 March 1981.
Current Policy no. 744, Bureau of Public Affairs, US State Department, 1985, p. 2.
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© 1994 Sydney D. Bailey
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Bailey, S.D. (1994). Terrorism. In: The UN Security Council and Human Rights. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-23701-2_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-23701-2_4
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