The International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism, adopted last Thursday by the General Assembly, was introduced to correspondents at a Headquarters press conference this morning by Philippe Kirsch of Canada, the Chairman of the Assembly’s Ad Hoc Working Group on terrorism, which prepared the text.
The Convention, first proposed by France last year, criminalized collection of funds to individuals or groups planning or carrying out acts of terrorism. If there were a broad adherence to it, said Mr. Kirsch, the Convention could effectively cut off sources of funds for terrorists. The next step would be to promote its adherence by States. States parties would be obliged to prosecute alleged offenders on their territories, or to extradite them to other States for prosecution.
The French initiative had received exceptional, positive momentum as soon as it had been announced, indicating that States were very interested in its adoption, he said.
(The 28-article Convention will be open for signature on 10 January 2000 and will enter into force once it has received 22 ratifications.)
Mr. Kirsch called the Convention a model instrument. In the first instance, it recognized financing of terrorism as a discrete problem with respect to international terrorism. It was interesting to note that the Convention established the offence of financing as an independent crime. For a crime to be committed under the Convention, there was no need for an actual act of terrorism to be committed. The fact of financing was enough.
The Convention was also a model instrument by virtue of its provisions on liability of legal entities, which was also a new concept in the struggle against international terrorism. It also provided for a number of actions that could be taken regarding the use, forfeiture or seizing of the funds in questions and using those funds for compensation of victims.
He said the Convention was part of a new generation of international legal instruments, starting from 1997 with the International Convention against Terrorist Bombings. The Convention included a number of new provisions. It excluded, for example, the possibility of using political motives as any kind of defence. It prohibited extradition when the purpose was discriminatory on a variety of grounds. The methods of cooperation among States were much more sophisticated than had been envisaged in older instruments.
He noted that the Sixth Committee (Legal) had approved mandates for the Ad Hoc Committee that had been elaborating anti-terrorism instruments and for the Sixth Committee’s working group on terrorism to meet in 2000 and 2001. He had resigned his chairmanship of both bodies because of new responsibilities given him by his Government. He wished his successor well in addressing the important topics that remained on the agenda, including the completion of work on an international convention for the suppression of acts of nuclear terrorism, an international conference on terrorism, and commencement of work on a comprehensive convention on terrorism.
Responding to questions, Mr. Kirsch said the new Convention on financing had provisions concerning legal entities and financial institutions, including banks; it also dealt with the issue of bank secrecy.
Asked whether major banks were involved in the elaboration of the Convention, he said that it had been States that formally participated in the negotiations. However, there had been a number of experts from different parts of society, and Governments had drawn on other expertise before the start of the negotiations. There had been concerns at the outset of the talks that, despite the momentum that had been created, the elaboration of the Convention would not be completed within a short time because of its complex nature, and because it involved a number of mechanisms that had never been touched upon before at the United Nations. But the quality of debates during the negotiations had been extremely high from the beginning, largely due to the presence of experts.
He told a correspondent that anti-terrorism conventions or instruments normally required adoption of fairly extensive legislation at a national level. Some of those conventions had been very widely ratified, but it was expected that it could take a few years for an instrument such as the new one to receive ratification. For example, the International Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombings adopted by the General Assembly in 1997, required, like most of those conventions, 22 ratifications to enter into force. It had received eight ratifications so far, although there were 52 signatories. Even though the number of ratifications required was fairly low, the number of signatures received in the two years that had elapsed was a significant achievement. It was an indication that more than 50 States were committed to ratification. He said in a few years, the new Convention should reach the threshold number of ratifications.
Asked whether there were estimates of terrorism finances, he said there were, but he did not think they were available at the United Nations.
“One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”, a correspondent commented and asked whether there was mechanism in the Convention for dealing with that political definition the distinction
between regarding a legitimate dissident group and a terrorist organization.
Mr. Kirsch said the attitude of States on the subject was generally very different now from what it had been in the Seventies when the problem had created a lot of difficulties. The General Assembly had adopted a number of declarations or resolutions reiterating the basic principle that terrorist acts were criminal, whoever committed them. So the principle now had become quite clear. There was no excuse for such acts in the new instrument or any other. Political defences were excluded for terrorist acts under the new Convention. The next step was to determine whether it was possible to define terrorism.
Asked whether there were provisions in the new Convention for information exchange among law enforcement agencies, Mr. Kirsch said its mechanisms for cooperation among States Parties were much more developed and much more sophisticated than in previous anti-terrorism instruments.
* *** *