After 20 Years, the UN Still Lacks a Definition and Gender Perspective on Terrorism

In just a few months, the United Nations (UN) will hold their Fourth Counter-Terrorism Week (CT Week) which will include a Plenary Meeting of the UN General Assembly for a ninth review of the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy (GCTS), adopted in 2006 and reviewed most recently in 2023. The GCTS is an important document outlining and affirming the UN’s commitment to preventing and countering terrorism. However, this strategy remains deeply flawed, lacking several key aspects which hinder its effectiveness and net positive outcomes. In December 2025, the UN Special Rapporteur for the UN Human Rights Council Ben Saul published a series of recommendations for the ninth review of the GCTS. The very last of these suggestions, Recommendation 17, is the most important of any in the document. Special Rapporteur Saul calls for the need to define terrorism and violent extremisms concretely, something which has been missing from the international community. This “definitional vacuum,” as coined by Rumyana Grozdanova, a Lecturer of Law at the University of Liverpool, poses legal and human rights challenges as it prevents fair and equal prosecution of terrorist acts and allows for weaponization of the word ‘terrorism.’ The manipulation of the definition of terrorism most negatively impacts women and gender diverse-communities, who are more likely to face harms from terrorist acts themselves as well as state-sanctioned CT strategies. In their article on misogyny in terrorism, Gutierrez, Lozano, and Moreno Cano find that gender and the targeting of women are systematically excluded from definitions of terrorism, despite their centrality to the execution of terrorist acts and ideological background of terrorist organizations.

Notably, of several definitions of terrorism coming from the UN, Customary International Law, the U.S., Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia, not a single definition mentions women or gender in either their definition of terrorist acts or their outlining of what it means to support terrorist acts and organizations. While it can not be ignored that the lack of a concrete definition of terrorism is problematic in and of itself, women particularly are harmed when loose definitions are applied to the financing and supporting of terrorist organizations. Women and women’s rights groups are often on the front line of CT work, and women peacemakers are often able to identify early signs of radicalization and assist in rehabilitation, as Fionnuala Ní Aoláin and Jayne Huckerby state in their report on “Gendering Counterterrorism: How to, and How Not to.” This work is often squeezed between terrorist acts and CT strategies, limiting its efficacy and reach.

Since 11 September 2001, the international community at large has emphasized efforts to counter the financing of terrorism and violent extremism in a way that hinders effective CT strategies. As explored by the Duke International Human Rights Clinic, restrictive rules around financing terrorism prevent women’s and civil society groups from mobilizing towards human rights and the women, peace, and security agenda. Moreover, with freedom to flex and stretch who is considered a member of a terrorist organization, states prevent gender groups and civil society from effectively addressing the root cause of violent extremism and working towards protecting at-risk individuals and communities. When these groups must tip-toe around who they support and how, their work becomes insurmountably harder. Beyond the work being done to prevent and counter terrorism, women generally are marginalized and disproportionately impacted by countering the financing of terrorism and ‘re-risking’ practice. The Charity and Security Network published a brief on gender and the finance of countering terrorism which states that these financial policies often overlook harmful gender dynamics in society, only further exacerbating them, and can ultimately negatively impact women’s rights and human rights. 

The UN Human Rights Special Procedures Report the “Global Study on the Impact of Counter-Terrorism on Civil Society and Civic Space” identifies the harms of ‘listing and sanctioning.’ The report states that “abusive designations have been made easier by the broadened criteria” of what is considered a terrorist act or terrorist organization. When governments are given free will to expand beyond reasonable definitions of terrorism, human rights, women, and gender diverse communities suffer. The only way to solve this problem and prevent further abuse is to nail down a concrete definition of terrorism, terrorist acts, and terrorist organizations. There is precedent for the international community to come together and define terms when needed: the UN General Assembly hosted both a ‘Genocide Convention’ and a ‘Tortute Convention’ to define each of these crimes and their specific constituent parts. The best option for the UN in their ninth review of the GCTS this summer is to follow suit and intentionally establish a definition of terrorism, what it means to support and finance terrorist organizations, and how to include considerations for gender and human rights in these definitions. A ‘Terrorism Convention’ is the best way to create international unity on the meaning and countering of terrorism, benefitting women’s rights and gender rights in the process.