The crime of Terrorism: Reflection on the rationale underlying the problematic of the Absence of a Common International Legal Definition

Abstract

Global modern terrorism constitutes major contemporary social problem cutting across almost every facet

of the society. Notwithstanding the fact that terrorism in all its facets put to question almost all international

human rights values, thereby necessitating particular attention from researchers and policy makers, this

phenomenon stills suffers from the absence of a common international legal definition, thereby provoking

a certain divergence, inconsistencies and insufficiencies in the definition and prosecution of the crime of

terrorism by various national legal systems. In the search for the rationale that can explain such an

international legal vacuum, this study identifies an acute and unsettled divergence and insufficiencies

surrounding moral philosophical debates on the acceptance, rejection and/or toleration of terrorism or some

of its forms by classical moral philosophical schools of thought on the one hand, and a strong controversy

looming over the political discrimination in the classification and categorization of what should amount to

terrorism on the other hand. In perspective therefore, and against this backdrop, the study recommends the

resort to other novel schools of moral philosophy like care ethics which may be different and/or

complementary to the other approaches adopted by the other classical ethical theories.