The Ad Hoc Committee on International Terrorism, the Diplomats Convention, and Other Early UN Efforts against Terrorism

Abstract

Against the backdrop of the German domestic experience with terrorism that was explored previously, this chapter assesses how Bonn dealt with terrorism on the international level, particularly at the United Nations (UN). It begins by addressing German policy on UN antiterrorism efforts before 1976, a period when Bonn took a more passive stance on antiterrorism negotiations: it did not initiate projects itself because it lacked UN membership. The chapter explores the development towards a progressively more proactive West German policy on terrorism over the course of the first five years of the decade. The debates that took place in the UN Ad Hoc Committee on international terrorism and the negotiations that led to the adoption of the UN Diplomats Convention were important steps in this shift in Bonn’s policy. These developments culminated in the West German proposal for a Convention against the Taking of Hostages, introduced in the UN General Assembly by the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) in 1976 and adopted in 1979.¹ This present chapter explores the path that led to the submission of the hostages project to the UN in 1976 by surveying Bonn’s strategies on several antiterrorism initiatives in the first half of the 1970s: the UN Ad Hoc Committee on international terrorism, the Convention for the Protection of Diplomatic Agents, a Belgian proposal for a convention against hostage-taking, and unsuccessful short-lived plans for a West German initiative in 1975.