Terrorism
In November 2004, a Secretary-General of the United Nations report described terrorism as any act "intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants with the purpose of intimidating a population or compelling a government or an international organization to do or abstain from doing any act". The international community has been slow to formulate a universally agreed, legally binding definition of this crime. These difficulties arise from the fact that the term "terrorism" is politically and emotionally charged. In this regard, Angus Martyn, briefing the Australian parliament, stated,
The international community has never succeeded in developing an accepted comprehensive definition of terrorism. During the 1970s and 1980s, the United Nations attempts to define the term floundered mainly due to differences of opinion between various members about the use of violence in the context of conflicts over national liberation and self-determination.
Alberto Abadie
Abadie's view is that the level of political freedom, not poverty, explains terrorism. As he told the Harvard Gazette, 'In the past, we heard people refer to the strong link between terrorism and poverty, but in fact when you look at the data, it's not there. This is true not only for events of international terrorism, as previous studies have shown, but perhaps more surprisingly also for the overall level of terrorism, both of domestic and of foreign origin.' His research indicated that it is areas with intermediate levels of political freedom that experience the most terrorism. Both societies with high levels of political freedom and authoritarian regimes have low levels of terrorism. Autocratic nation's 'Tight control and repressive practices keep terrorist activities in check, while nations making the transition to more open, democratic governments may be politically unstable, which makes them more vulnerable.'