Counter Terror Gazette

AVSEC Conventions: beyond Chicago, until Beijing

25 Oct 2010

Annex 17 to the Chicago Convention, sometimes referred to as The Security Annex, is the most famous of all the international legal instruments designed to counter the threat of the aviation industry being targeted by those with criminal intent. Yet the Chicago Convention is not the only document worthy of note. Diana Stancu reviews the impact of The Hague, Tokyo and Montreal Conventions and associated Protocols, and considers their aims and objectives whilst evaluating to what extent amendments are necessary. She also highlights the latest legal instruments which were agreed in Beijing this September yet await ratification.

Prior to 1960, most of the collective action to combat international terrorism was undertaken by the United Nations or its predecessor, the League of Nations. Although the League of ations made cohesive efforts to create an international criminal court to deal with acts of international terrorism by drafting a Convention to Combat International Terrorism in 1937, this Convention never came into force as it was signed by only 13 states and ratified by only one. 

Shocked by the rising trend of aircraft hijacking in the early 1960s and the failure of the 1958 Geneva Convention on the High Seas to offer rules applicable to the offence of hijacking of aircraft, the international community considered adopting, under the aegis of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), the 1963 Tokyo Convention on offences and certain other acts committed on board aircraft, followed by the 1970 Hague Convention for the suppression of unlawful seizure of aircraft and the 1971 Montreal Convention for the suppression of unlawful acts against the safety of civil aviation. MORE ONLINE