Terrorism, What Does it Mean in the Legal World?

By STEPHANY MUÑOZ DOT, PEOPLE’S DAILY

The Legal Committee at the HNMUN has voted for “terrorism” as its topic for the conference, hoping to reach an agreement on such a polemic, and important topic nowadays. We had the opportunity to ask three questions to the delegates present, we took answers from China, Nigeria and South Sudan. China identified international terrorism biggest problem, in a legal aspect, as it being difficult to apply International Criminal Law to it. For the Nigerian delegate, one of the problems at the core of subjecting terrorist acts to the Law, is the fact that the definition of “terrorism” varies from State to State, so what could be considered as a terrorist act in a country might not be in another. What was being done today in his words is “trying to figure out a way to get terrorism to fall under criminal law rather than something that does not respect State sovereignty, so that finally people around the world will be able to understand what is and isn’t terrorism.” As a conclusion to the press conference, we heard from the delegate from South Sudan who very clearly stated that freedom fighters should be distinguished from terrorists because “not doing so would be going against a fundamental principal of the United Nations.”

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