No unitary definition of terrorism exists in international law and it is unlikely that States will agree upon one in the future. Chapter 1 describes how and why definitions differ in peacetime and in armed conflict and between international terrorism and domestic terrorism. Each of these scenarios evinces particularities in the contours of terrorism under international law. The chapter also explains why the United Nations Comprehensive Convention against International Terrorism has not been successfully concluded.

This chapter is structured in seven parts: position of individual, human rights, international refugee law, nationality and statelessness, international terrorism, international health law and international criminal law. The second part covers the denial of a Ukrainian extradition request by a German court, and Germany’s concerns over human rights of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang. The fourth part assesses a decision by a German court that there is no Palestinian State and no Palestinian nationality. The fifth covers the Federal Prosecutor General accusing Russia of State-ordered murder. The seventh encompasses a German court’s sentence against a member of the Syrian opposition for war crimes against persons, the Federal Public Prosecutor General declining to bring charges against members of the Federal Government for aiding the killing of Iranian General Soleimani, a German court sentencing the handing over of a child to an ‘Islamic State’ training camp in Syria as a war crime of enlisting children, the conviction of an IS member by a German court for aiding and abetting a crime against humanity by enslavement and the conviction of an IS member of war crimes by a German court.

This chapter deals with Germany’s position on individuals, human rights and international criminal responsibility. It is in seven parts: position of individuals; human rights; international refugee law; nationality and statelessness; international terrorism; international health law; and international criminal law. The second part covers the Federal Constitutional Court rejecting the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities’ interpretation of the CRPD; Germany’s criticism of Brunei’s Sharia Penal Code as violating human rights and of Saudi Arabia for violating the CRC; Germany’s concern over possible human rights abuses in Xinjiang, China; the German Federal Government adopting its thirteenth human rights report; and candidates nominated by Germany for human rights bodies. The fourth part discusses an amendment to the Nationality Act depriving members of terrorist militias with dual nationality of their German citizenship. The seventh part deals with the resignation of the German judge from the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals; Germany requesting Lebanon to extradite a Syrian official; German charges brought against Syrian officials for crimes against humanity and against a member of ‘Islamic State’ for war crimes; rulings on war crimes against property; and Germany’s view on possible crimes against humanity and war crimes and genocide in Myanmar.

Quintiliano Saldaña Garcia-Rubio (1878–1938) was a leading proponent of legal pragmatism in European criminal law circles in the interwar period. The first part of this chapter surveys his formative years and his early academic professional development, examining the influence of Franz von Liszt’s Marburg School of Criminal Law on his academic interests and early professional career. The second examines Saldaña’s seminal theory of ‘universal social defence’ and his 1925 Hague Academy course which included one of the first projects for an international criminal code, and reviews Saldaña’s legislative contribution to the 1928 Spanish Criminal Code project, an example of a proto-fascist criminal code. The third follows Saldaña’s career during the Second Spanish Republic, his criminal law and criminology work in the development of his theory of ‘legal pragmatism’, and revisits his engagement with the mid-1930s international legal debates on terrorism in the framework of the International Bureau for the Unification of Criminal Law. The conclusion revisits the mysterious circumstances of Saldaña’s death during the Spanish Civil War and the dark legacy of his legal thought on the criminal law system of General Franco’s regime.