Europe 1 / Photo credits: Ahmad GHARABLI / AFP 20:34 p.m., October 12, 2023

After Hamas' attack on Israel on Saturday, many states and political figures condemned the assault on the Palestinian terror movement. However, some elected officials refuse to apply this qualifier to this movement, like La France insoumise. This can be explained by the lack of a global consensus definition of a terrorist group.

Under fire since Hamas' massive assault on Israel, the elected representatives of La France Insoumise justify their position of not calling this Palestinian Islamist movement "terrorist". "The only two organizations shown by the UN as terrorist organizations are al-Qaeda and Daesh," Mélenchon said during a trip to Bordeaux on Wednesday.

While the United Nations does not designate Hamas as such, its Sanctions Committee has its sights set on several dozen other mobilities listed here, some of which are more or less affiliated with al-Qaeda and Daesh. It should also be noted that other leading international organizations recognize Hamas as a terrorist movement, such as the European Union or the Organization of American States, which includes a large part of the countries of the Americas, including the United States.

No consensus definition

This situation can be explained by the lack of a global consensus on the definition of terrorism. In 1994, the United Nations General Assembly elaborated a paragraph on this subject in its "Declaration on Measures to Eliminate International Terrorism": "Criminal acts intended or calculated to provoke a state of terror in the general public, a group of persons or particular persons for political purposes are in all circumstances unjustifiable, regardless of the political, philosophical, ideological, racial, ethnic, religious or other considerations that may be invoked to justify them."

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For its part, in 2002, the European Union adopted a common definition of terrorism and terrorist group. For the EU, such a movement is a "structured association of two or more persons, established over time and acting in a concerted manner with a view to committing terrorist offences". The latter are based "on a combination of objective elements (homicide, bodily harm, hostage-taking, etc.) and subjective elements (acts committed with the aim of seriously intimidating a population, destabilizing or destroying structures of a country or an international organization)," writes the European institution.

While draft definitions of terrorism do exist around the world, each country is free to develop its own definition, as the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights reminds us.