"freedom fighters" or "terrorists"? UN says ...

[Almighty Colin]

Last year, the UN created "the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change " to reform the UN. Its mandate is to examine today's threats, identify the collective action that can address those threats and recommend the changes necessary to ensure colletive actions against those threats.

On Thursday the panel will present its results to the UN. The paper states that the UN must send "an unequivocal message that terrorism is never an acceptable tactic, even for the most defensible of causes". Are Palestinians, Iraqis or al Qaeda "freedom fighters"? The report concludes that "there is nothing in the fact of occupation that justifies the targeting and killing of civilians".

Some more quotes:

"lack of agreement on a clear, well-known, definition … has stained the UN's image".

"any action that is intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants, when the purpose of such act, by its nature or context, is to intimidate a population, or compel a government or an international organisation to do or to abstain from doing any act".

(the problem of defining terrorism is) "not so much a legal one as a political one ...
Achieving a comprehensive convention on terrorism, including a clear definition, is a political imperative."