Ad Hoc Committee on the Elaboration of a Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism

Established 1996; has met annually for three decades without producing an agreed treaty definition. The deadlock centres on whether (a) national-liberation movements against colonial or foreign occupation are excluded and (b) state armed forces in armed conflict are covered. The absence of agreement is itself a doctrinal datum — the international legal category of terrorism is constituted primarily by Security Council practice and domestic criminal law, not by treaty.