Due to globalization, countries of the world have become a single community that does not face a specific visible enemy, but rather the threat of terrorism. As a result, many countries began to put all their efforts together to eliminate any issue that may be a potential threat to their national and international security. In light of these measures, countries established a legal system to combat terrorism that involves humanitarian relief organizations and financial sectors.
This legal system aims to ban any financial support for terrorist activities at the individual, institutional and financial sector levels, but these penalties may be challenging for both financial institutions and humanitarian organizations due to different perceptions of each country on the concept of terrorism, which is yet to have a common international definition. In other words, the policies adopted since the introduction of this anti-terrorism legislation complicates any process for humanitarian institutions, from a practical and a moral point of view, as there is no common definition of terrorism. Therefore, laws related to these institutions should not interfere with their humanitarian work, as they carry out humanitarian activities to ensure that people and societies live in decent conditions.
International organizations and governments did not succeed in reaching a mutual definition of terrorism. Hence, this adversely affected the activities carried out by the humanitarian organizations, which aim to alleviate the financial and mental struggles of people, and that narrows down the scopes of work for the humanitarian organizations, affecting the independence of their activities and ethics. The difference in defining the concept of terrorism among the world has led to a global overwhelming chaos. Each country sets its own definitions of terrorism according to its own ideology and perceptions, which resulted in human rights violations under the excuse of “combating terrorism”. Moreover, many countries overlooked various incidents of human rights’ violations, claiming that it was for merely for the “interest” and “ideology” of the state. Undeniably, each country classifies terrorist groups according to its own ideology, paving the way for many human rights violations, and in this context, the following question arises: Is it possible to agree on an absolute clear non-biased definition for the concept of terrorism that is not based on countries’ ideologies, interests, race, language, or religion?
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