Before the UN Fights Terrorism, It Needs to Define It

"For 15 years, the world has tried to agree on a definition of terrorism and failed. The issue has been on the agenda in the G-7 and G-8 summits and at least two summits of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. Every year, the United Nations' General Assembly has grappled with the issue. The issue has also been the bread-and-butter of countless think tanks across the globe, again with no results.

The UN has hit a definitional impasse because a majority of its members still pretend that we have good and bad terrorists. Many intellectuals and even some governments support or tolerate terror groups because they believe that their aims were just or that they would operate only against 'others.'

The 57-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation will never accept that killing people in Tel Aviv by driving a truck into a crowd is an act of terrorism. (This has happened in Israel more than 50 times.)

For years, French governments turned a blind eye to the activities of Algerian terrorists, who incidentally used Nice as a key base in Europe, because they were fighting 'a dictatorial regime.'...

Will the next UN General Assembly, due in September, do better on this issue now that hundreds of people have been killed by terrorists in more than 20 countries in almost every continent?

A universally agreed definition of terrorism and its designation as a threat to all humanity could open the way for global cooperation to deal with a scourge that spares no one. It would enable the international community to adopt punitive measures against states sheltering terrorist groups on any pretext."