ABSTRACT
Comparative analyses of national support systems for victims of terrorism have been scarce, even in the post-9/11 environment. This is particularly true for the international legal responses to the needs and rights of victims of terrorism, which have attracted even less scholarly attention. This chapter aims to help to fill this gap by exploring the most important policy and legal instruments produced by the main European international actors in this field: the European Union (EU), the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the Council of Europe (CoE). It also outlines the running debate on the potential benefits of a legal statute embracing a catalogue of rights for victims of terrorism and the extent to which this goal should constitute a priority for victims associations. Indeed, one of the key themes in the chapter is the notion that victims of terrorism have specific needs that require differentiated attention due to the intrinsically political nature of their victimhood.
