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Ní Aoláin, Fionnuala --- "The complexity and challenges of addressing the conditions conducive to terrorism" [2018] ELECD 161; in Nowak, Manfred; Charbord, Anne (eds), "Using Human Rights to Counter Terrorism" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2018) 166

Book Title: Using Human Rights to Counter Terrorism

Editor(s): Nowak, Manfred; Charbord, Anne

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN: 9781784715267

Section: Chapter 4

Section Title: The complexity and challenges of addressing the conditions conducive to terrorism

Author(s): Ní Aoláin, Fionnuala

Number of pages: 29

Abstract/Description:

Terrorism is paradoxically both an epiphenomenal and constant phenomena. In its micro practice terrorism’s predictability, durability and pathways are inconsistent, capricious, and defy easy capture. Terrorism has a long history. In fact, terrorism has long been experienced in national and international systems, a potent example being the murder of the Austrian Crown Prince by a Serbian nationalist triggering the outbreak of the First World War. States, scholars, and commentators have consistently struggled to define precisely what constitute the conditions that produce violence that, inter alia, primarily targets civilians and civilian objects to achieve its objectives. Despite decades of labeling the acts of various groups and organizations as ‘terrorist’ in multiple parts of the globe, we are no closer to a comprehensive and agreed definition of terrorism by states. In spite of considerable state and international efforts being spent to regulate terrorist groups and individuals labeled as terrorists, much less substantive scrutiny has been directed to defining and separating out the causes of terrorism. Astonishingly, any basic literature review reveals that scholars, policy-makers, and regulators spend far more time thinking about ‘defeating’, ‘ending’, and ‘managing’ terrorism than they do reflecting on the individual, communal, institutional, and structural cases that enable and produce terrorism. At a minimum, the limits of our collective knowledge should force some uncomfortable conversations about the efficacy of legal and policy solutions to terrorism.