Show Me the Money: International and Jamaican Efforts to Suppress Terrorist Financing

• Author: Michelle Walker
• Pages: 217-241

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SHOW ME THE MONEY:

International and Jamaican Efforts

to Suppress Terrorist Financing

Michelle WalkerIntroduction

e attack by terrorists on the Twin Towers in New York,

Pennsylvania and the Pentagon in the United States on September 11,

2001 and the subsequent high prole ‘war on terror’ has been well

documented. e strategies used by some states to engage in this ‘war’

have been the subject of intense controversy. In the US and the UK

signicant judicial decisions and important legislative changes have

resulted from challenges to methods used to conduct ‘the war on

terror’. Certain issues have been well ventilated in academic debates,

such as the relationship between international human rights law and

international humanitarian law, and what conduct amounts to torture.1

e debate will continue to rage in diplomatic and political circles as

long as the ‘war’ lasts. All of this controversy sometimes obscures the

fact that the international community has been dealing with terrorism

for many years before 2001 and has developed several instruments to

deal with various types of terrorist activities.2

Signicantly, only one new Convention and three new Protocols

dealing with terrorism have been negotiated and approved under the

auspices of the United Nations since 2001.3 e eorts to conclude

another instrument, a comprehensive convention on terrorism have

been ongoing since 1996, stalled largely because of the issue of the

denition of a terrorist, which some states insist must acknowledge the

legitimate struggles of peoples for self-determination.4

RISKY BUSINESS: Perspectives on Corporate Misconduct

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e international community has been unable to agree on a specic

denition for terrorism. e very successful compromise approach

which led to the negotiation of 13 United Nations agreements, was to

identify specic behaviour which would be dened as terrorist activity

and require states to impose criminal sanctions for such behaviour,

including attacking civil aviation, attacking nuclear facilities,

kidnapping internationally protected persons and attacking maritime

navigation.

is chapter will examine one of these agreements, the International

Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism and

the issues raised by its implementation in domestic law. Specically,

the obligations in the Convention on terrorist nancing and their

implementation in Jamaican law will be analysed. e chapter will also

look at Security Council Resolution 1373 and assess how its provisions

may have modied the obligations contained in the Convention,

as well as any constitutional issues which may have arisen in the

implementation of the resolution.

International Convention for the Suppression of

Terrorism Financing: Background

e Convention was adopted on December 9, 1999, opened for

signature on January 10, 2000 and entered into force on April 10,

2002, with 22 ratications. It was the twelfth anti-terrorism convention

which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly.5

is Convention was drafted and adopted in a very short period

of time. In 1998, in the General Assembly, France proposed that a

convention for the suppression of terrorism nancing be concluded

to ensure that all aspects of terrorism are addressed by international

law. e Ad Hoc Committee6 was mandated by General Assembly

Resolution 53/108 of 1998 to elaborate a convention for the suppression

of terrorism nancing. e fact that a convention was drafted and

adopted at the next session of the General Assembly in 1999, showed

that there was a clear consensus in the international community on the