TerrorismWhy the time is right to set up an international terrorism court
The global toll of terrorism is rising at an alarming rate. According to the Institute for Economics and Peace, terrorist incidents claimed 3,329 lives in 2000 but 32,685 in 2014, and the economic costs of terrorism skyrocketed at least tenfold during the same period. As a result, certain governments are proposing that the UN establish a new court with a specific remit to prosecute international terrorist crimes. The court, I sablished, would join the growing ranks of international courts and tribunals that have been rapidly proliferating since the end of the Cold War. Of the more than 37,000 legally binding judgements passed by these international courts, some 90 percent have come down since 1990.The problems and risks of creating such a court are all too apparent, and go some way to explaining why the court has never been set up.
Expert: a terrorism court may be necessary // Source: theconversation.com
The global toll of terrorism is rising at an alarming rate. According to the Institute for Economics and Peace, terrorist incidents claimed 3,329 lives in 2000 but 32,685 in 2014, and the economic costs of terrorism skyrocketed at least tenfold during the same period. As a result, certain governments are proposing that the UN establish a new court with a specific remit to prosecute international terrorist crimes.
This would be the first ever court with a remit to try international terrorists in peacetime on the basis of international law. It would be designed to complement the mechanisms countries already have in place to deal with domestic terrorism, which sometimes struggle to deal with terrorist acts committed across borders and all the legal problems they cause.
The court would join the growing ranks of international courts and tribunals that have been rapidly proliferating since the end of the Cold War. Of the more than 37,000 legally binding judgements passed by these international courts, some 90 percent have come down since 1990.
Attempts to give international judges jurisdiction over transnational terrorist acts is not new. After the king of Yugoslavia and the French minister of foreign affairs were assassinated in Marseilles in 1934, several members of the League of Nations for the first time signed up to international anti-terrorism treaties.
Among their various provisions was a call to create an international court for trying international terrorists. It never came to pass – but some 80 years later, spurred by a series of devastating Islamic State-inspired suicide attacks and the highly internationalized war in Syria, the idea is undergoing something of a revival.
A critical juncture
The notion of an international terrorism court has been gaining traction ever since the events of 9/11, and the time might just be right to set one up.
Even though terrorism still has no single globally accepted legal definition, broadly defined, it’s increasingly thought of as a global phenomenon and an international crime. It is now routine for the UN Security Council to qualify every major international terrorist act as “a threat to international peace and security”, the same phrase it used to describe the 2014 Ebola outbreak.
