The definition of terrorism and the current brazilian legislaton

Abstract

Terrorism is a tough challenge to the security of the 21st century. Different countries, powerful or emerging ones, are facing terrorist attacks within their own societies, or in the context of the conflicts they are involved in. At the same time, as the term “terrorism” assumed a negative meaning in a general way, and it also lacks a clear and a worldwide accepted definition, the use of a biased definition may fit into political interests to condemn any opposing political movement Therefore, this paper argues that it is essential to develop internal legislation in accordance to a neutral and phenomenological perspective regarding terrorism in order to cooperate with the effort of security forces and the judiciary branch to prevent and fight it. From this perspective, this paper concentrated in identifying the core constituent elements from the historical development of terrorism, as well as from common academic definitions of terrorism, so as to reach sine-qua-non characteristics of terrorism as a phenomenon. After that, these core aspects were compared to the Brazilian legislation against terrorism, focusing on the Law n° 13,260/2016, in order to identify possible lack of coherence that could undermine the internal or the international efforts to prevent or fight terrorism. The findings of this paper indicate that there are some gaps or mistakes in Brazilian current legislation that can lead to a lack of coherence of legal framework in comparison to the academic phenomenological perspective. Therefore, this paper recommends some changes to the Brazilian legislation in order to refine the definition of terrorism, reinforcing the core aspects of the academic definition, and also restating what is not terrorism, avoiding misunderstandings which could undermine the effort to prevent the occurrence of terrorism.