ABSTRACT

The most fundamental problem facing that part of international law that governs terrorism is definitional. There are two aspects to the controversy: identifying what distinguishes international terrorism from other kinds of armed conflict, and determining what forms of terrorism transgress international norms. Some international consensus has been achieved in two areas: the protection of internationally significant persons, and a prohibition of hostage-taking. Both of these obligations reflect widely observed norms that have been codified in various conventions. Until the beginning of the 1970’s many nations, including the United States, condoned some forms of terrorist attacks on civil aviation if they accepted the underlying political ends of the persons taking the action. During the 1950’s, for example, many Western countries refused to return to Czechoslovakia, Poland, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia persons who had hijacked airplanes in order to flee those countries.