Terrorism has become an international issue for long without finding any solution. Briefly explain and critically evaluate the same in the light of contemporary developments.

Question

In its second preliminary objection, Myanmar submits that The Gambia’s Application is inadmissible because The Gambia lacks standing to bring this case before the Court. In particular, Myanmar considers that only “injured States”, which Myanmar defines as States “adversely affected by an internationally wrongful act”, have standing to present a claim before the Court. In Myanmar’s view, The Gambia is not an “injured State” (a term that Myanmar appears to use interchangeably with the term “specially affected State”) and has failed to demonstrate an individual legal interest. Therefore, according to Myanmar, The Gambia lacks standing under Article IX of the Genocide Convention.
Myanmar draws a distinction between the right to invoke State responsibility under general international law and standing before the Court. It argues that, even if it were established that a “non-injured” Contracting Party to the Genocide Convention has the right to invoke another State’s responsibility for violations of the Convention, this would not necessarily entail the right to bring a case before the Court. To this end, Myanmar contends that there exists a difference between the common interest in the accomplishment of the purposes of the Genocide Convention and a State’s individual legal interest that may be enforce through the institution of proceedings before the Court. In Myanmar’s view, only States “specially affected” by an internationally wrongful act have standing to bring a claim before the Court.
Myanmar further submits that The Gambia’s claims are inadmissible in so far as they are not brought before the Court in accordance with the rule concerning the nationality of claims which, according to Myanmar, is reflected in Article 44 (a) of the International Law Commission’s Articles on the Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts. Myanmar asserts that the rule concerning the nationality of claims applies to the invocation of responsibility by both “injured” and “non injured” States and irrespective of whether the obligation breached is an erga omnes partes or erga omnes obligation. Consequently, in Myanmar’s view, The Gambia lacks standing to invoke Myanmar’s responsibility.

Answer 1

The core legal problem:
Terrorism has no single agreed definition under international law. The United Nations has tried to finalise a Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism since 1996 and still has not managed it, because countries cannot agree on excluding self-determination movements or state actors from the definition. Without that agreement, every country writes its own law and calls different acts terrorism, which makes joint global action harder to coordinate.

How India built its legal response over time:
India tried strong single-purpose laws first, TADA in 1985 and POTA in 2002, both of which the Supreme Court upheld as constitutional in Kartar Singh v. State of Punjab and PUCL v. Union of India, but only while insisting on safeguards against misuse, and both laws were eventually allowed to lapse or were repealed over concerns about that same misuse. The law that remains, the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, has instead been amended repeatedly, in 2004, 2008, and 2019, rather than replaced, adding a dedicated investigation agency after the 2008 Mumbai attacks and the power to designate individual terrorists in 2019.

The tool that works without a definition:
Since agreeing on what terrorism means has failed, the more effective global tools attack its financing instead. UN Security Council Resolution 1373 requires every member state to freeze terrorist assets and criminalise financing without needing to define the underlying act, and the Financial Action Task Force's grey and black lists apply real economic pressure on states seen as permitting that financing to continue.

Why the problem persists anyway:
Financing controls and national statutes can disrupt specific attacks and networks, but they do not touch the reasons people join extremist movements in the first place, inequality, poor governance, or a sense of exclusion. Since the law only reaches conduct after radicalisation has already happened, it is bound to keep managing terrorism rather than ending it until it is paired with a real answer to those underlying causes.

Terrorism has become an international issue for long without finding any solution. Briefly explain and critically evaluate the same in the light of contemporary developments.

Solution and Explanation

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