Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism

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Source: Live Mint

About the Convention and Developments related to it

• Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism was proposed by India in 1996 to be adopted by UNGA.
• The proposed treaty intends to criminalize all forms of international terrorism and deny terrorists, their financiers and supporters access to funds, arms, and safe havens.
• The CCIT provides a legal framework that makes it binding on all signatories to deny funds and safe havens to terrorist groups.
• The original draft that was tabled in 1996 and discussed until April 2013
• It’s major Objectives are:

1. 1. To have a universal definition of terrorism that all 193-members of the UNGA will adopt into their own criminal law
   2. To ban all terror groups and shut down terror camps
   3. To prosecute all terrorists under special laws
   4. To make cross-border terrorism an extraditable offence worldwide.

• Deadlock to the Convention: Despite India’s efforts to push a global intergovernmental convention to tackle terrorism, the conclusion and ratification of the CCIT remain deadlocked, mainly due to opposition from three main blocs – the US, the Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC), and the Latin American countries.
• All three have objections over the “definition of terrorism” (the most divisive of the issues) and seek exclusions to safeguard their strategic interests. For example, the OIC wants exclusion of national liberation movements, especially in the context of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. The US wanted the draft to exclude acts committed by military forces of states during peacetime.
• The CCIT is currently being discussed at the Sixth Ad Hoc Committee of the United Nations. The committee is the primary forum for the consideration of legal questions in the UNGA(as of 2016)
• Although consensus eludes towards the adoption of the terrorism convention, but discussions have yielded three separate protocols that aim to tackle terrorism: 
  1. International Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombings, adopted on 15 December 1997
  2. International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism, adopted on 9 December 1999; and 
  3. International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism, adopted on 13 April 2005.

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